LIBRARY OF CONGRES& 



Shelf 'iC^A 7 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN 

WITH OTHER POEMS 



BY 



CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1887 



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Copyright, 1886, 
Br CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCIL 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



CONTENTS. 

♦ 

PAGE 

Akiel and Caliban 1 

Lionel and Lucille 21 

San Borondon 33 

The Old Year 39 

The Centennial Year 44 

After the Centennial 50 

A Night-Picture 52 

A Child-Savior 55 

An Old Umbrella .58 

To Ione 61 

After-Life 64 

Prince Yousuf and the Alcayde. A Moorish Ballad . 67 

Rosamond 72 

A Question 74 

My Studio 76 

Talent and Gendjs 78 

Venice 80 

The Two Dreams 83 

At the Grave of Keats 84 

Broken Wings 80 

Sea-Pictures 88 

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis 90 

Love's Voyage .92 

Survival of the Fittest 95 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



A Word to Philosophers 
The Coal-Fire 
Two Views op It 
Old and Young 



. .. . . .97 

101 

105 

106 

The Victories of Peace 107 

Summer Dawn 108 

The Old Apple-Woman. A Broadway Lyric . . . Ill 

The Weather-Prophet 114 

Omar Khayyam 118 

Longfellow . . . 121 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 123 

Frederick Henry Hedge. On his SOth Birthday . . 127 

So Far. so Near 130 

Sonnets. 

To E. P. C. 



I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 



1. 

2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 
8. 
9. 
10. 



132 
133 
134 
135 
136 
137 
138 
139 
140 
141 



Seven Wonders of the World. 

XL The Printing-Press 142 

XII. The Ocean Steamer 143 

XIII. The Locomotive 144 

XIV. The Telegraph and Telephone . . . 145 
XV. The Photograph 146 

XVI. The Spectroscope 147 

XVII. The Microphone 148 

XVIII. The Fireside 149 



CONTENTS. 



XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 

XXXIX. 

XL. 

XLI. 

XLII. 

XLIII. 

XLIV. 

XLV. 

XL VI. 

XLVII. 

XL VIII. 

XLIX. 

L. 

LI. 



The Lady's Sonnet. Twilight . . . 150 
The Lover's Sonnet. Midnight . . . 151 
The Pines and the Sea . . . .152 

Pennyroyal 153 

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony . . . 154 

1. The Seceders 155 

2. " 156 

1. In a Library 157 

2. " 158 

Past Sorrows 159 



1. Life and Death 

2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 
8. 



1G0 
161 
162 
163 
164 
165 
166 
167 
168 
169 



To John Greenleaf Whittier 
To Oliver Wendell Holmes 

Bayard Taylor 170 

John Weiss 171 

George Ripley 172 



To G. W. C. . 

London 

Veiled Memories . 

1. Tennyson 

2.- " . 

To G. W. C. 

Gladstone 

1. To J. R. L. . 

2. 

1. The Human Flower 



173 
174 
175 
176 
177 
178 
179 
180 
181 
182 



vi CONTENTS. 

LII. 2. The Human Flower 183 

LIII. August 184 

LIV. Idle Hours 185 

LV. 1. Music and Poetry ..... 186 

LVI. 2. " 187 

LVII. To Sleep 188 

Ormuzd and Ahriman. A Cantata .... 189 
A Poet's Soliloquy 230 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 1 



I. 



Before Prospero's cell. Moonlight. 
Ariel. 

So — Prospero is gone — and I am free — 
Free, free at last. His latest charge have I 
Performed with duteous care ; have sent the breeze 
To blow behind the ship whose rounded sails 
Now bear him homeward ; and I am alone. 
Yet I, who pined for freedom — I, who served 
This lordly mind, not of my own free choice, 
Though somewhat out of gratitude, — for he 
By his strong sorcery did release me once 
From durance horrible, — now, since the touch 

1 To forestall suspicion of my having borrowed even any sugges- 
tion of the idea on which this poem is founded from M. Kenan' s 
' ' Caliban ' ' —r. though this has a totally different conception from 
my theme — I may say that I had written the greater part of my 
poem long before I had heard of or seen the brilliant and auda- 
cious satire of that distinguished French author. 



* ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

And sympathy of human souls have warmed 

My cold electric blood, and I have known 

How sweet it were to love and be beloved 

Within the circle of the elements 

Whose soulless life is death to human hearts, — 

I, here alone, now grieve to be alone, 

No longer linked with mortal loves and cares. 

For as I flit about the ocean caves, 

Or thread the mazes of the whispering pines, 

Or in the flower-bells dream long sunny days, 

Or run upon the crested waves, or flash 

At no one's bidding, but in wild caprice, 

A trailing meteor or a thunderbolt, — 

Or sing along the breeze that hath no sense 

Or soul of hearing, melodies I framed 

For Prospero and his child, — I have no will 

To work as once, when serving earned this boon 

Of liberty, long sought, now tame and cheap. 

For what to me are all these air-fed sprites 

I marshalled, by his potent art constrained ? 

Their bloodless cold companionship can give 

No joy to me, now half estranged from them. 

There 's Caliban, 't is true — a human beast — 

Uncouth enough to laugh at — not so vile 

Perhaps as he appears — rather misshaped 

And thwarted in his growth. And yet he seems 

In this fair Isle, where noble souls have lived, 

Like a dull worm that trails its slime along 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 3 

The full heart of a rose ; and now at last 
Free from the foot of Prospero, all the more 
Slave to himself, crawls feeding where he lists. 

Enter Catjban in the distance. 

Lo, here he creeps, and looks as if he meant 

To enter his old master's cell. But no ! 

I '11 enter first, and there assume the voice 

Of Prospero. He some sport at least shall yield. 

Ah, sometimes I must be a merry sprite, 

If only to beguile these lonesome hours. 

[Vanishes into the cell. 

Cauban. 

So — so — the island 's mine now. I may make 

My dwelling where I choose. Methinks this cell 

Might serve ; though somewhat I suspect 

Its walls are steeped in magic. And besides, 

Too well my bones remember how that lord 

Let fly his spirits at me. How he cramped 

My limbs ! The devil-fish o'ertake his ship ! 

He 's far away — and I can curse him now, 

And no more aches shall follow. As for him, 

Yon drunken fellow — and his mate — good Lord, 

How I was fooled to gulp his bragging lies ! 

The man in. the moon, forsooth ! And yet he bore 

Brave liquor, though it set my wits agog. 

Would there were more of it. Well, I '11 make my bed 



4 ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

E'en here, where Prosper slept. King of the isle — 
King Caliban ! But I 've no subjects yet, 
Save beasts of the wood, and even over them 
I lack those strong old charms of Sycorax. 

[Enters the cell. 

Ariel (within). 
Halt there ! What man art thou ? Slave — Caliban ! 

Caliban. 
Ah, ah ! 'T is Prospero back again — Ah me ! 

Ariel. 
How dar'st thou here intrude upon my rest ? 

Caliban. 

Nay now — I cannot tell — I thought thee gone — 

I saw thee go. 

Ariel. 

Think'st thou I cannot leap 
Across the seas ? Think'st thou I cannot ride 
Upon the wind ? Know'st thou not Prosper's might ? 

Caliban. 

Do not torment me ! Alas, alas, I thought 

His book and staff were buried — he at sea ! 

Ah, here 's a coil — here 's slavery again. 

I '11 run, before the cramp gets to my legs. [Exit. 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

Ariel (advancing). 

Good riddance ! He '11 not venture here again. 

This grot is sacred to remembered forms 

'T were base ingratitude could I forget. 

Their names make fragrant all the place. They fill 

The void of life within me more and more, 

And draw me closer to all human-kind. 

Much have ye taught me. Thou, O Prospero, 

Whom all too grudgingly I served, dost seem 

Now not a master, but a gracious friend. 

And she — Miranda, peerless in her bloom 

Of maidenhood — had I but human been, 

What tenderer germs — but no — too late, too late 

Those virtues, graces — this proud intellect 

That made a sport of magic, and renounced 

The sceptre of Wonderland as though it were 

The bauble of a child. Too late I see 

The topmost glory of the Duke, who shone 

Grandest abjuring supernatural gifts — 

Most godlike in forgiving his base foes. 

(Pauses in deep thought. ) 

There is no life worth living but that life 

I missed, the sympathetic interchange 

Of mind with mind and heart with heart. This world 

Of air and fire and water, where I dwell, 

Is but a realm of phantasms — spectral flames 

Like the pale streamers of the frozen North ; 



6 ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

Is less than half of life — motion without 
Life's warm reality — a trance, a dream. 
Nay, even this slave — this son of Sycorax 
Hath something human in him. Might I now 
But find some passage to his heart, but breathe 
Into his sluggish brain some finer breath, 
But lift him to companionship of thought — 
'T were worth the trial. At least I '11 follow him 
And wind about him with an airy song. 
He 's fond of music, for whene'er I sing 
He listens open-mouthed. He 's not so bad 
But some ethereal trap may snare him yet. 

(Sings.) 

I, a spirit of the air, 
Now may wander anywhere 
All about the enchanted Isle. 
But no more the master's smile 
Greets me as his door I pass ; 
I shall hear no more, alas ! 
Hear no more the magic word 
Of the seer who was my lord — 
Nevermore ! 

Nevermore my flying feet 
Bring him music strange and sweet, 
Run for him upon the wind, 
While the cloven air behind 
Meets with roar and thunder-crack 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

In the lightning of my track — 
Nevermore ! 

Enter Caliban, listening. 
Caliban. 

This might be one of them. Full oft I hear 

Their music in the ah'. And yet he lies, 

And is a devil of Prospero's, for he hints 

That Prosper 's gone : and yet I heard his voice. 

And yet that voice might be a mimicry. 

Good Moon, assist me. Tell me, friendly Moon, 

Is Prospero gone ? Tell me, good Man i' the Moon, 

He will not pinch me again. 

Ariel. 

Nay, doubt not, friend. 
He 's gone. 

Caliban. 

Now Setebos preserve my bones ! 
What voice art thou ? For nothing can I see 
But stars, and moonlight twinklings in the woods, 
And black broad shadows of the trembling trees, 
And here and there a fluttering zigzag bat. 

Ariel. 
I hover in the moonbeam overhead. 

Caliban. 

I think I 've heard thee sing and talk before. 
Did Prosper leave thee here to govern us, 



8 ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

And sing us into pitfalls with thy lies 

And lying songs ? And yet how sweet thou singest ! 

Come, show thyself — I think thou 'rt not a fiend. 

Ariel. 

I '11 show myself anon. But do not fear. 
Prosper is gone. A lonely spirit am I 
Seeking companionship. I 'd talk with thee. 

Caliban 

Good — an' thou talkest sense, and wilt not bite 
Or hunt me — nor dost bid me bring thee logs. 

Ariel. 

I have no need of fuel, nor of food 

Nor dwelling, nay, not even of bodily shape. 

Yet I can take a shape if so I choose. 

Caliban. 
Then prythee do. I fain would see thee, friend. 
I like it not, this talking to the air. 

Ariel. 
I '11 humor thee if I can be thy friend. 
"What shape shall I assume ? 

Caliban. 

"Why, any shape 
But Prospero's — and I '11 shake thee by the hand, 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 9 

And swear thou art as merry a fellow as e'er 

I have sat cracking nuts with — in my dreams — 

For wide awake I ne'er encountered such. 

Nay, this seems like a dream. Perchance it is — 

And I asleep, and babbling in my sleep — 

And Prospero still lord of all the Isle. 

Ariel. 

Nay, all is real. I tell thee he has gone. 
Follow me now to yonder cave, where laps 
The sleepy sea upon the pebbled shore, 
Smoothing the flickering wrinkles of the moon, 
Who steeps her golden column in the brine. 
There will I meet thee in a human garb. 

Caliban. 

Where'er you please, so I but see your face. 
You are no Jack-o'-lantern, I believe. 
I know thee not, but something tells me true 
That I may trust thee. Sing then. I will follow. 

[Exeunt, Ariel singing. 

Sonq. 

Follow, follow, 
Down the deep hollow — 
Down to the moonlit waves, 
Down where the ocean caves 
The full tides swallow. 
Follow, follow ! 



10 ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

From the curse, from the blight, 
From the thraldom of night, 
From the dark to the light, 
From the slave to the man 
We will lift Caliban. 
Farewell, Hecate ! Rise, Apollo ! 
Follow, follow, follow ! 



II. 



In a cave by the sea. Caliban, and Ariel as a 
forester, seated. 

Caliban. 

So then it seems thou 'rt one of these who served 
This wizard lord — and he a duke disguised — 
One of his tricksy spirits. I like not this. 
Why did'st thou serve him ? 

Ariel. 

He delivered me 
From torture by his magic. I was bound 
By gratitude as well as by his spells 
To wait upon him. Oft unwillingly 
I served him. But at last I loved him well ; 
Knew his soul's greatness, honored what he prized, 
Which yet was but his minister — his art ; 
Felt in my airy veins a blood-warm beat, 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 11 

Till through them double color seemed to run, 
Like moonlight mingled with the rosy dawn. 

Caliban. 
If he was noble, why did he enslave me ? 
I never did him wrong, till he by force 
Took from me this mine island — pent me up 
In a vile prison — made me toil and drudge 
All day, and when I lagged, beset me sore 
With pinches and with terrors of his art. 

Ariel. 

Thou nam'st not all he did. Was he not kind ? 
Taught thee to speak and reason — treated thee, 
At worst, as he would treat a faithful dog, 
(For little more thou wast at first,) till thou 
Did'st bite the hand that stroked and fed thee, yea, 
And would' st have wrought dishonor on his child. 

Caliban. 

I know not. I was never taught to curb 

My passions, and I lived a lonely life. 

I wronged him ? Yet my punishment was hard. 

I might have served him, yet not been a slave. 

It turned all love to hate to be his slave. 

He did not treat me as he treated thee. 

Ariel. 

I was his servant too. But I perceived 
There was a nearer tie 'twixt him and me, 



12 ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

For which I learned to love him. Let that pass. 

What now behooves thee is to summon up 

Thy human heart long styed in ignorance 

And fear and hate ; and since thou calTst thyself 

Lord of this island, learn to be a lord 

In nobler style, and with a human love 

Of all things good. 'T were little gain for thee 

To have thy freedom, if thou 'rt still enslaved 

To baser powers within thee. What thou hadst 

Ere Prospero came, is thine to enjoy and own. 

But own thyself — the man within the beast ; 

For man thou art, and of the same stuff framed 

As his who owned thee — and better than it seemed 

Thou wert, perchance, to one whose will enslaved 

All human and all elemental power 

His magic could enforce, to overpay 

For a few brief years the dukedom he had lost. 

Learn now to prize thy freedom in a field 

Where thou may'st work for good and not for harm. 

Curse not, but bless. If I do chance to talk 

Above thy head, I '11 dwarf my thought to thine ; 

Or meet thee again when thou upon my words 

Hast pondered. . . . Now, by Apollo's shaft, I think 

The moon-calf is asleep ! I '11 vanish then. 

[Exit Akeel. 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 13 

III. 

Sunrise. 

Caliban (waking). 

What, is he gone ! Or is it another dream ? 

It is my fate, I think, still to be duped 

With visions and with shows. Perhaps now he 

Was the man in the moon — Perhaps we '11 meet 

again. 
He may have said the truth. And yet, somehow, 
I dropped asleep as when I hear the wind 
Sing in the pines, or listen to the fall 
Of streams in drowsy summer afternoons. 
I do begin to love this spirit — albeit , 

He spoke in praise of Prosper. Prosper ? — well — 
It may be that I knew him not — who knows ? 
I am glad he has sailed away though. Setebos ! 
What — sunrise ! Did I sleep so long ? In faith 
I know it, for I 'm hungry. I will dig 
Some mussels from the sand, and pick some fruits. 
I 'm not a cub, it seems — said he not so ? — 
But made for better things ; no slave — a man 
Fit to be talked with, and not called vile names — 
Made of the same stuff with that Prospero — 
Ah ha ! good stuff, do you see ? — the very same — 
Only a little soiled. We '11 see — we '11 see. 



14 ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

(Ariel sings in the distance. ) 
The golden sun the clouds hath kissed 

And fires the hilltops grim and old. 
And down the valley melts the mist 

And turns the earth to gold. 

The lordly soul is lord of all. 

The heart that loves its human-kind, 
Where'er its warming sunbeams fall, 

Leaves night and death behind. 

Caliban. 
Fine sprite, I hear you : think I love you too. 
I '11 follow you — though what you said to me 
Is hard to understand. I '11 hear you talk 
Again ; but first of all must eat and drink. 
Made of the same stuff with that Prospero ? 
No beast — no slave ! well — this is something new. 

IV. 

A pine grove by the sea. Ariel as a forester. 

Ariel. 
Free, free at last ! Yet bound by a chain whose links 
Are the heart's memories. Free to roam unchecked, 
Untasked. Free as these glancing dancing waves, 
This summer wind. But by an inward need 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 15 

Of action, and by late-born sympathies 
With human life, bound not the less to serve ; — 
Though for the present I must waste my art 
Upon this son of Sycorax. Yet I have seen 
A kindlier sight flash in his brutish eyes, 
And in his harsh voice heard a tenderer tone. 
I think he almost loves me. But alas, 
What room for human fellowship, what hope 
To evolve the obstructed and distorted germ 
Of manhood here, in idle solitude 
Haunted by soulless elves and sprites — a land 
By human hearts and human intellects 
Untenanted ? Around us Nature smiles 
In indolent repose — too beautiful, 
Too soft — a land of dull lethargic ease, 
Steeped in the oblivion of the sleepy South. 
(Pauses in thought.) 

I know another island — where the North 

Blows with a fresher wind ; — where pulses bound 

Electric to assured results of thought. 

Its fertile plains, its rocky coasts and hills 

Are peopled with a vigorous race. Its ports, 

Forests of masts ; its fields by labor tilled ; 

Its growing towns and cities from afar 

Flash in the morning of a crystal sky, 

And stud its "winding streams like jewels strung 

On silver threads : — a people brave and strong, 

Yet peaceful, and advancing in all arts, 



16 ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 

Science and culture, by wise freedom nursed. 
Oft in my master's errands flying north 
I have seen it far across the wrinkling waves, 
Facing the sunrise like a golden cloud, 
And heard the humming of its alien marts. 
And thither we might sail — I and this slave 
That was — not long a slave when he has known 
Contact with men of a superior mould 
In bonds of law and human brotherhood. 

Caliban {who has been approaching unperceived) . 

Good brother Ariel, you are lost in thought. 
I know 't is about something wise and good. 
Come — don't be glum. A penny for your thoughts. 

Ariel. 
How like you this fair island, Caliban ? 

Caliban. 

Oh, well enough — not having known a better. 
And yet 't is lonely here — a prison still, 
Although our jailer 's gone. And I would fain 
See some new faces — not Italian dukes 
Or jesters — I have had enough of them — 
But like your own, whene'er you let yourself 
Be seen, and condescend to talk with me. 



ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 17 

Akiel. 
What think you of a voyage from this shore 
To another island ? — better far than this, 
I needs must think ; a place where men have built 
Great cities, tilled broad fields, and sail huge ships — 
A home for you and me more fit than this ; 
For I 'm becoming human very fast, 
While you will need ere long some earthlier friend. 

Caliban. 

Well — on the whole I 'm tired of this dull life, 

And don't object to see some other lands : 

But how do you propose to sail away 

Without a ship ? 

Akiel. 

We '11 see. Trust me for that. 
One task the more my magic shall achieve. 
We '11 build a boat. Your toil shall not be great. 
Yet your old task you must resume awhile, 
And bring me a few logs. 

Caliban. 

Most willingly 
For you, good Ariel. But for Prospero — 
Thank Heaven, I 've carried my last load for him ! 

(They retire, talking together.) 



18 ARIEL AND CALIBAN. 



V. 



Sunset. Ariel and Caliban in a sail-boat are leaving 

the island. 

Ariel sings. 
I have built me a magical ship ; 

Its sails of the air were wrought. 
From the land of symbol and dream we slip 

To the land of deed and thought : 
To a clime where the north and south 

Have mingled their noble seed ; 
And the glance of the eye and the word of the mouth 

Are one with the honest deed. 
We sail, away, away ! 

To a land where the brain of man 

Works magic as strange as this ; 
And the heart of the future builds a plan 

As deep as the soul's abyss. 
We need not the tide nor the gale. 

Nor the sun nor the moon with their beams, 
For our boat has a magical rudder and sail 

That were wrought in the island of dreams. 
Away, away, away! 



L> ENVOI. 19 

( Voices, echoing from the island. ) 

In the island of dreams we stay. 
We echo your parting lay. 
Speed on by night and day ! 
Speed on ! away, away ! 

(Caliban sleeps. ) 
Akiel. 

Sleep on ! We leave the past. The night enshrouds 
The enchanted isle. And wake thou when the sun 
Shines on another clime — and shines in thee 
With the new light which thou hast never seen. 



L'ENVOI. 

Pardon, great Poet, should I seem to mar 
One mystery of thy supernatural tale ; 

Or with unreverent eye to scan the star 

Whose splendor makes his satellites so pale ! 

If in my play and privacy of thought, 
Led by thy light, I lingered for a while 

Amid the scenes thy master-hand had wrought, 
And, hovering over thy deserted isle, 
Dared to invoke thy sprites without command 
To come unmarshalled by thy mystic wand — 
If on the margin of thy immortal page 
I scrawled a sketch unfit to grace thy stage, 
'T was but the joy of dwelling there with thee 
Near that enchanted sea. 



20 L'ENVOI. 



T was but the wondering question of a child, 
To know what may have chanced beyond the wild 
Fantastic dream, from which too soon he woke 
To common daylight and life's weary yoke. 
Pardon I crave once more, O mighty seer! 
I bow before thee here 
With reverent love and awe, 
And say — « I only sported with his thought, 
While in its golden meshes gladlv caught, 
I dreamed and fancied. He awoke and saw ' » 



LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 

i. 

In the beautiful Castleton Island a mansion of lordly 
style, 

Embowered in gardens and lawns, looks over the glim- 
mering bay. 

In the light of a morning in summer, with stately beauty 
and pride, 

Its turrets and glittering roof flash down from the hills 
like a star. 

There, pillowed in woods, it blinks on the dusty village 
below ; 

And ere it settles itself to its rest in the ambered dusk, 

Its windows blaze from afar in the gold of the setting 
sun. 

There in a curtained alcove facing a lawn to the south, 
Lucille one morning in early spring was sitting alone. 
Now in a novel she read, and now at her broidery 

stitched ; 
And now, throwing both aside, at her piano warbled and 

triUed. 



22 LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 

Then on a balcony leaning, she wished that the weeks 

would pass, 
For she with her mother to Europe was going. Her 

father had died 
And left her an heiress ; and lovers like moths came 

fluttering round, 
Dazzled with visions of gold, and half believing them 

love, — 
All but one, who was poor, and loved her, but not for 

her wealth. 
Three months had Lionel known her — but never had 

told her his love. 
How could he ask her to wed him, the scholar who 

drudged for his bread ? 
Even were his offers accepted, (and little his chances, he 

thought,) 
What would they say in the city ? " He has picked up 

a fortune, it seems : 
A shrewd lucky fellow I" So proudly he kept his fond 

thoughts to himself. 
Seldom he saw her alone. In a circle of fashion she 

moved. 
Whenever he called, there were carriages waiting, with 

liveries fine — 
Visitors going and coming, with shallow and gossiping 

talk. 
Those who knew him would surely have said, " 'T is 

strange he should love 



LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 23 

A girl of such frivolous tastes." But such are the ways 

of the heart — 
Ever a riddle too deep for the crude common-sense of 

the world. 

To-day no visitors came, and Lucille was deep in her 

book — 
(A tale of romantic affection far back in the Orient 

days) — 
When a ring at the door was heard, and — Lionel stood 

in the hall. 
He had heard she was going to Europe. He would n't 

yet bid her good-bye, 
For he hoped he might see her again ere fate put an 

ocean between. 
Something more earnest than usual she felt was in 

Lionel's face ; 
Something more tender and deep in the tones of his 

tremulous voice, 
Though half hidden in jest too grave and intense for a 

smile. 
She, brimming o'er with her poets, and fresh from her 

bath of romance, 
Clothed the season, and him, and herself, in an opaline 

light. 
Softer her tones, and her words less tinged with fashion 

and form, 
Cordially lighted like birds on the ground of his intimate 

thoughts. 



24 LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 

And as he left her, to stroll on the hills of the beautiful 

island, 
Hope with her roseate colors enveloped the earth and 

the sky. 

'T was one of those April days when the lingering Winter 
stands 

Waving his breezy scarfs from the north for a last good- 
bye ; 

When the delicate wind-flowers peep from the matting 
and moss of the woods, 

And the blue Hepatica lurks in the shadowy dells of the 
fern ; 

When the beautiful nun, the Arbutus, down in her clois- 
ters brown, 

Creeps through her corridors damp in the dead old leaves 
of the past, 

Whispering with fragrant breath to the bold things dan- 
cing above : 

" Tell me, has Winter gone ? May I peep — just peep, 
at the world ? " — 

When the spaces of sky are bluer, with white clouds 
hurrying fast, 

Blurring the sun for a moment, then letting him flash 
on the fields, 

While the shadows are miles in breadth, and travel as 
swift as the wind 

Over the sparkling cities afar and the roughening bay ; — 



LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 25 

When the pine-groves sigh and sing as the wind sweeps 
under and through 

The cheerful gloom of their spicy shade ; and the wil- 
lows lithe 

Bend and wave with the tender green of their trailing 
boughs ; — 

When the furry catkins drop from the silvery poplar tree ; 

When the bare, gray bushes are tipped with the light of 
their new-born leaves, 

And the petted hyacinths sprout and curl their parasite 
lips 

Under the sunlit, sheltering sides of the palace walls, 

And seem to scoff at the violets hidden deep in the grass, 

And the common, yellow face of the dandelion's star, 

As it peeps like a poor man's child through the rails of 
the garden fence. 

Then, as Lionel entered the crowd and the city again, 
Lighter his labors appeared in his office, wall-shadowed 

and dusk. 
Dreams of the island and woods swept over his figures 

and books : 
Visions of love in a cottage, with fashion and splendor 

forgotten. 
Changeable April had shown but its sunniest side to his 

heart. 

Once more, — twice, to the island he went : and Lionel 
hoped 



26 UONEL AND LUCILLE. 

A tenderer feeling for him had dawned in the heart of 

Lucille. 

Ever with friendlier greeting she met him : for she in 
her mind 

Had dressed up a hero of fiction; and Lionel -could 
it be he ? 

Was not his name of itself a romance? Then his face 
and his form, 

Voice and manners and culture, were just what her hero's 
should be. 

So with the glamour of life unreal she saw him; and 
yet — 

Was it love? She thought so, perhaps. At least she 
would dream out her dream : 

This was a real live novel -and worth reading through, 
was it not ? 



n. 

One day, when the bushes were white in the lanes, and 

the bees were astir 
In the blooms of the apple-trees, and the green woods 

ringing with birds, 
Lionel asked Lucille to walk with him over the heights 
Looking far down on the Narrows and out on the dim 

blue sea. 

So through the forest they strolled. They stopped here 
and there for a flower, 

Then sat to rest on a rock.' An oak-tree over their 
heads 



LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 27 

Stretched abroad its flickering lights and shadows. The 

birds 
Sang in the woodlands around them. The spot seemed 

made for romance. 
And Lionel drew from his pocket a book that had lately- 
appeared, 
A volume of lovers' verse by a poet over the seas, 
And read aloud from its pages. Lucille sat twisting a 

wreath, 
Laurel and white -thorn blossoms that half dropped 

away as she twined them ; — 
Paused now and then to listen ; and as he was closing 

the book, 
Laid a wild flower between the leaves to remember the 

place — 
And playfully placed her wreath on his head, as if he 

were the poet. 
Silent and musing they sat, as they turned to look at the 

sea, 
Watching the smoke of the steamers and white sails 

skimming afar. 
And Lionel said, "Ah, soon you too will be steaming 

away 
Down the blue Narrows ; and I — shall miss you — more 

than you know." 
" Why should you miss me ? " she said. " So seldom 

you visit our house." 
" Had I but followed my wishes ; — but you like the 

lady appeared, 



28 LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 

Shut in the circle of Comus. How hard to enter your 

ring ! " 
" What should prevent you from coming ? How often I ■ 

wished you would come ! 
Nobody calls that I care for : our island is growing 

so dull." 
"Yes — and you long for a change — and so you are 

going to Europe. 
There in a whirl of delights, with fashion and wealth at 

command, 
Soon you '11 forget your poor island, and all the admirers 

you knew." 
" No " — she whispered — " not all " — and blushed, 

with her head turned away, 
Looked down and murmured : " You think I am wedded 

to fashion and wealth : 
Yet often I long for the simpler manners the poets have 

sung, 
The grand old days when souls were prized for their 

natural worth. 
You think I can rise to no feelings and thoughts of a 

serious life — 
Can value no mind and no heart but — such as you meet 

at our house. 
I care not for such — I fancied you knew me far better 

than that." 
"Lucille" — he never had called her Lucille, but the 

name came unbidden ; 



LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 29 

" Lucille, could you love a poor toiler who dared not to 

offer his heart 
And his hand — and in silence had loved you, and 

wished you were poor for his sake, 
So fortunes were equal ? " And she, still floating in rosy 

romance, 
Murmured, " I could," with a look that melted the walls 

of reserve 
And mingled two souls into one. Then, turning away 

from the sea, 
The sea that so soon must divide them, they pledged to 

each other their troth. 
And Lionel saw not the fates that were frowning afar 

o'er the waves ; 
For the world wore the color of dreams, as homeward 

they wended their way. 

Bright were the meetings that followed — and yet with 

a shadowy touch 
On Lionel's hopes, as if in the changeable April days 
He still were roaming the hills, and still looked over the 

bay 
Where cloud and sunshine were flying, with doubtful 

promise of spring. 
Lucille had a reason, it seemed, to keep their betrothal 

untold. 
The day was so near of their parting. She feared what 

her mother might say. 



30 LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 

'T were best they should part but as friends. They would 

write to each other the same — 
And they would be true to each other — and all would 

be clear before long. 
And Lionel yielded, and pondered. And so they parted 

at last. 

in. 

The summer had hardly begun when a letter from Eng- 
land came, 

Full of the voyage and landing — but little of what he 
had hoped. 

Too light, too glancing it seemed for a first love-letter 
from one 

Far over the sea, who had said he should ever be first 
in her thoughts. 

Bright and witty it fluttered from topic to topic — but 
never 

Paused with a tremulous wing to dwell on the love she 
had left. 

Something there was in its tone that said " I am happy 
without you : " 

Something too little regretful — too full of her glittering 
life. 

And as one gathers a beautiful flower ne'er gathered be- 
fore, 

Hoping a fragrance he misses, and yet half imagines he 
finds — 



LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 31 

Wooing the depths of its color too rich for no perfume 

to match — 
So seemed her letter to him, as he read the lines over 

and over. 
Yet when Lionel answered, he breathed not a word of 

the thought, 
Shading the glowing disc of his love with distant surmise. 
" Soon," he said, " will the novelty cease of this foreign 

excitement. 
Then she will think sometimes of me as the sun goes 

down 
Over the western waves — and tenderer tones will flow, 
And mingle with warmer words in her letters from over 

the sea." 
Yet when another letter came, it brought her no nearer, 
Less of herself, and more of the colors that tinted her life. 
And Lionel wrote with passionate words : " Only tell 

me, Lucille, 
Tell me you love me — but one brief line — and I will 

not complain." 
Restless, troubled, one day he passed her house on the 

island ; 
Shut to the sun and the breeze, it blinked on the village 

below. 
Over the balcony leaned a purple Wisteria vine, 
(Blooming, but not in its season, as oft 't is their habit to 

do,) 
Trailing its ladylike flounces from window and carved 

balustrade, 



32 LIONEL AND LUCILLE. 

And dropping its blossoms as brief as love. And Lione 
muttered : 

" She too over that balcony leaned one day as I passed — 

Leaned like a flowery vine ; and smiled as I passed be 
low, 

And waved me an airy kiss, with a pose of her beau- 
tiful form. 

Can love that promised so truly be frail as these clus- 
ters of June ? " 

Month after month now passed. Though he wrote as 

fondly as ever, 
Brief were her answers, and longer between — till they 

finally ceased. 
A year from the day when they parted, a letter from 

Paris arrived, 
Short and constrained. It said : "I fear I have made 

you unhappy. 
We have read too much of the poets. Our troth was a 

thing of romance. 
My mother forbids it, it seems. There are reasons 't were 

painful to tell. 
I 'm sure you would find me unfitted — and I am not 

worth your regretting. 
Adieu — and be happy. Lucille." 

Next month in the papers he saw 
She had married a Count — some Pole with an unpro- 
nounceable name. 



SAN BORONDON. 

Saint Brandan, a Scotch abbot, long ago 
Sailed southward with a swarm of , monks, to sow 
The seeds of true religion — nothing else — 
Among the tribes of naked infidels. 
And venturing far in unknown seas, he found 
An island, which became monastic ground. 
So runs the legend. Little else was known 
Of him we Spaniards call San Borondon. 
Some said he was a sorcerer, some a priest ; 
None truly knew. But this is clear at least, 
That there was seen to appear and disappear 
An island in the west, for many a year, 
That bore his name : but no discoverer yet 
His feet upon that shore had ever set. 

At TenerifYe and Palma I was one 

Who saw that island of San Borondon. 

A hundred of us stood upon the shore, 

And saw it as it oft was seen before. 

The morn was clear ; and westward from the bay 

It glimmered on the horizon far away. 



34 SAN BORONDON. 

We watched the fog at sunrise upward curl 

And float above that land of rose and pearl ; 

And sometimes saw behind a purple peak 

The sun go down. And some said, " We will seek 

Westward, until we touch the fairy coast, 

Or prove it only some drowned island's ghost " — 

But after many days returned to swear 

The vision vanished in the pale blue air. 

Yet still from off the fair Canary beach 

Lay the strange land that none could ever reach. 

Then others sailed and searched : and some of these 

Returned no more across the treacherous seas ; 

And no one knew their fate. Until at last 

We hailed a caravel with shattered mast 

Toiling to harbor. Half her sails were gone. 

" Ho, mariners, what news of Borondon ? " 

We shouted — but no answering voice replied ; 

No sailors on her gangway we descried ; 

Her shrouds looked ghostly thin, her ropes w r ere dim 

As spiders' webs athwart a tree's dead limb ; 

And still as death she drifted up the bay, 

A battered hulk grown dumb and old and gray. 

At length she touched the strand, and out there crept 

A haggard man, who feebly toward us stepped, 

And answered slowly, while we brought him food 

And wine. He sitting on a stone, we stood 

An eager crowd around him, while we sought 

What news he from San Borondon had brought. 



SAN BORONDON. 35 

With eyes that seemed to gaze beyond the space 
Of sea and sky — with strange averted face, 
And voice as when some muttering undertone 
Of wind is heard, when sitting all alone 
On wintry nights, we see the moon grow pale 
With hurrying mists — he thus began his tale. 

" We saw the island as we sailed away. 
It glimmered on the horizon half that day. 
But while our caravel still westward steered, 
Amazed we stood — the isle had disappeared. 
At night there came a storm. The lightning flashed 
From north to south. The frightful thunder crashed. 
Under bare poles we scudded through the dark, 
Till morning gleamed upon our drifting bark — 
The red-eyed morn 'neath beetling brows of cloud, — 
And the wind changed. Then some one cried aloud, 

* Land — at the westward ! ' And with one accord 
All took contagion of that haunting word 

* San Borondon.' The island seemed to lie 
Three leagues away against a strip of sky 
That on the horizon opened like a crack 
Of yellow light beneath the vault of black ; 
Then, as with hearts elate, we nearer sailed, 
The clouds dispersed, the sun arose unveiled. 

The wind had almost lulled ; the waves grew calm. 
We neared the isle, we saw the groves of palm, 
The rugged cliffs, the streamlet's silver thread 



36 SAN BORONDON. 

Dropped from the misty mountains overhead ; 

The shadow-haunted gorges damp and deep ; 

The flowery meadows in their dewy sleep ; 

The waving grass along the winding rills ; 

And, inland far, long slopes of wooded hills. 

And all the sea was calm for many a mile 

About the shores of that enchanted isle. 

Our sails half -filled flapped idly on the mast ; 

And all the morning and the noon had passed 

Before we touched the shore. Then on the sand 

We stepped and took possession of the land 

For Spain. No signs of life we heard or saw. 

But suddenly we stopped with fear and awe ; 

For on the beach were giant footsteps seen, 

And upward tracked into the forests green, 

Then lost. But there, with wondering eyes we found 

A cross nailed to a tree — and on the ground 

Stones ranged in mystic order — and the trace 

Of fire once kindled in that lonely place. 

As though some sorcerer's sabbath on this ground 

A place for its unholy rites had found. 

And so, in vague perplexity and doubt, 

Until the sun had set, we roamed about. 

And some into the forest far had strayed, 

While others watched the ship at anchor laid. 

When through the woods there rang a distant bell. 

We crossed our breasts, and on our knees we fell. 

Ave Maria — 't was the hour of prayer. 



SAN BORONDON 37 

A consecrated stillness filled the air. 

No heathen land was this ; no wizard's spell 

The clear sweet ringing of that holy bell. 

Scarce had we spoken, when we heard a blast 

Come rushing from the mountains, fierce and fast 

Down a ravine with hoarse and hollow roar ; 

And sudden darkness fell upon the shore. 

' The ship — the ship ! See how she strains her rope — 

All, all aboard — cast off ! we may not hope 

To save her on these rocks. Away, away ! ' 

Then as we leapt aboard in tossing spray, 

Still fiercer blew the wind, and hurled us far 

Into the night without a moon or star. 

And from the deck the sea swept all the crew. 

And I alone was left, to bring to you 

This tale. When morning came, the isle was gone — 

The unhallowed land you call San Borondon ; 

A land of sorcery and of wicked spells, 

Of hills and groves profane and demon dells. 

Good friends, beware ! Seek not the accursed shore, 

For they who touch its sands return no more, 

Save by a miracle, as I have done — 

Praised be Madonna and her blessed Son ! " 

Such was his story. But when morning came, 
There lay that smiling island, just the same. 
And still they sail to find the enchanted shore 
That guards a fearful mystery evermore. 






38 SAN BORONDON. 

A thousand years may pass away — but none 
Shall know the secret of San Borondon. 

And so, perchance, a thousand years may roll, 
And none shall solve the enigma of the soul — 
That baffling island in the unknown sea 
Whose boundless deep we name Eternity. 



THE OLD YEAR. 

good Old Year ! this night 's your last. 
And must you go ? With you I 've passed 

Some days that bear revision. 
For these I 'd thank you, ere you make 
Your journey to the Stygian lake, 

Or to the fields Elysian. 

Long have you been our household guest ; 
To keep you we have tried our best. 

You must not stay, you tell us, 
Not even to introduce your heir, 
Who comes so fresh and debonnair 

He needs must make you jealous. 

1 heard your footsteps overhead 
To-night — and to myself I said 

He 's packing his portmanteau. 
His book and staff like Prospero's 
He has buried, where nobody knows, 

And finished his last canto. 



40 THE OLD YEAR. 

Your well-known hat and cloak still look 
The same upon their entry hook, 

And seem as if they grew here. 
But they, ah me ! will soon be gone, 
And we be sitting here alone 

To welcome in the New Year. 

The boots so oft put out at night 
Will vanish ere to-morrow's light 

Across the east is burning. 
When morning comes, full well I know 
They '11 leave no footprints in the snow 

Of going or returning. 

At twelve o'clock to-night Queen Mab 
Will take you in her spectral cab 

To catch the downward fast train. 
Some of us will sit up with you, 
And drink a parting cup with you, 

While I indite this last strain. 

G good old wise frost-headed Year, 

You Ve brought us health and strength and cheer, 

Though sometimes care and sorrow. 
Each morn you gave us newer hope 
That reached beyond the cloudy scope 

Of our unseen to-morrow. 



THE OLD YEAR. 41 

We knew you when you were, forsooth, 
No better than a stranger youth — 

A fast youth, some one muttered, 
When thinking how the days you gave 
On ghostly horses to their grave 

Have galloped, flown and fluttered. 

But what is time, by moon and stars 
Checked off in monthly calendars, 

To fairy kings like you here ? 
What are the centuries that span 
The inch-wide spaces ruled by man ? 

Or what are Old and New Year ? 

You go to join the million years, 

The great veiled deep that never clears 

Before our mortal seeing : 
The shrouded death, the evolving life, 
The growth, the mystery, the strife 

Of elemental being. 

We see in your abstracted eye 
The clouded flame of prophecy, 

Of time the immortal scorning — 
And yet the sympathetic smile 
That says, " I fain would stay awhile 

To bid your rhymes good-morning." 



42 THE OLD YEAR. 

Ah ! no more rhymes for you and me, 
Old Year, shall we together see, — 

Yes, we to-night must sever. 
Good-bye, old Number Seventy-five ! 
It 's nearly time you took your drive 

Into the dark forever. 

The train that stops for you will let 
A stranger out we never met, 

To take your place and station. 
With greetings glad and shouts of joy 
They '11 welcome him — while you, old boy, 

Depart with no .ovation. 

Besides, he has a higher claim 
Than you — a grand ancestral name 

That sets the bells a-ringing. 
The great Centennial Year is he. 
The nation's noisy jubilee 

Young Seventy-six is bringing. 

I hear the puffing of his steam. 
I hear his locomotive scream 

Across the hills and meadows. 
One parting glass — the last — the last ! 
Ten minutes more, and you '11 have passed 

Into the realm of shadows. 



THE OLD YEAR. 43 

Five minutes yet ? But talk must end. 
On with your cloak and cap, old friend ! 

Too long we have been prating. 
Your blessing now ! We 11 think of you. 
Ah, there 's the clock ! Adieu — adieu ! 

I see your cab is waiting. 

December 31, 1875. 



THE CENTENNIAL YEAR. 

A hundred years — and she had sat, a queen 
Sheltering her children, opening wide her gates 
To all the inflowing tribes of earth. At first 
Storms raged around her ; but her stumbling feet 
Were planted firm upon the eternal rock. 
Her young majestic head with sunny curls 
And features tense with hope and prophecy 
Now rose above the clouds of war. She gazed 
Wistful yet calm into the coming years, 
And grew in strength and wisdom : and afar 
Across the sea the nations of the world 
Beheld, and muttered from their ancient halls, 
" Who is this stranger, young, unskilled and bold, 
This Amazonian regent of the wilds 
We spurned, and only sought when exile doomed — 
Whose sons are marshalling the land and sea, 
The winds, the electric currents and the light, 
To do her bidding ? Who this Titan queen 
Whose face is flushed with sunrise, and whose hands 
Reach forth to welcome all our swarms disowned, 
Cast forth upon her shores, and turn their blight 
To bloom and culture — e'en their crime to good ? " 



THE CENTENNIAL YEAR. 45 

Then some beheld her with derisive sneers, 
Judgments derived from rules of use outworn, 
And stale conventional comparison ; 
With fear and envy some — others with awe 
And vague hope of ideal rights of man, — 
Green harvests now, but swelling into grain 
For future time. 

And still the years rolled on. 
Tremors of battlefields thrilled through her limbs, 
Once, twice, and thrice — the last, alas ! like shocks 
Of agonizing pain ; for round her feet 
Her own — her children grappled in the fields 
Of blood and cannon-shot and fire and smoke — 
One recreant multitude for slavery's crown, 
And one for freedom and the common cause 
That gave the country birth, and pledged the States 
To unbroken union based on equal rights. 
But justice triumphed, and the stricken land 
Regained her poise hard-won. 

Still rolled the years, 
Till now she rounds her circling century ; 
And Peace and Plenty smile upon her fields 
That stretch from sea to sea. Then she arose 
And spake unto the States that clustered round, 
Her children all, war's yawning gulf o'erbridged, 
North, south, and east and west, her children still ; 
And to the ancestral realms across the seas : — 
" This year I celebrate my birth. For me, 



46 THE CENTENNIAL YEAR. 

One of the Titan race of latest days, 

A race Saturnian fables knew not of, 

When giants grew, but hearts and minds were dwarfed 

And cramped by precedents of brutal force 

That stormed Olympus, so must needs be crushed — 

For me a hundred years are as one year 

To you, and this centennial year a day. 

Therefore 't is meet that we invite the world 

To bring its various treasures to our shores, 

And blend with us, through symbols and results 

Of art and grand achievement, in the creed 

Of human brotherhood. And may this year 

Be as the seal and pledge of race with race 

Forever — one with all, and all with one ! " 

Then in a chosen spot, where the first vows 

Of Liberty were plighted, we beheld 

A wonder-work, as though some Geni snared 

By incantation wrought the people's will. 

For stately palaces arose and gleamed 

Amid the trees ; and on the distant sea 

Came argosies full-laden with a wealth, 

Not such as Cortez from the plundered realms 

Of Montezuma bore, blood-steeped and wrapped 

In crime, back to voracious Spain — but brought 

With friendly rivalry from every clime ; 

From shops and looms of quiet industry 

And rare inventive art ; more wonderful 






THE CENTENNIAL YEAR. 47 

Than crude barbaric days could ever dream. 

There, heaped*profusely through those spacious halls, 

The treasures of the abounding century 

Were ranged in order. Thither, as to a shore, 

The crowding timerwaves of a hundred years — 

Silent as streams of air — had pulsed and flowed 

And broke in surges, not of yeasty foam, 

Kesultless thought, and aimless bubble-dreams, 

But products of the busy world-wide Mind. 

From European and from Asian lands, 

From tropic heats and Arctic solitudes, 

From towns of traffic and from western wilds, 

From sunless mines and clear, high-windowed halls 

Of skill and industry, and lonely rooms 

Where artists and inventors dreamed and toiled, 

Pledged to some dear thought-burden of a life : — 

From schools and laboratories closely bent 

On nature's inmost secrets, and where swift 

Discovery trod upon discovery's heels, 

In silent unforeseen audacity 

Of masterly conception and result. 

Here Europe lavished all her modern wealth 

Of apt contrivance, imitative skill, 

And costly comfort. There remote Japan 

With strange and fascinating styles of art 

Took fancy captive ; and the Orient lands, 

Whose more familiar forms we knew, set forth 

Their porcelain wonders and their bronzes quaint, 



48 THE CENTENNIAL YEAR. 

Their ivory lace-work and their brilliant silks. 
And there, from end to end of one vast space 
Throbbed the blind force whose swift gigantic arm 
A thousand glistening iron slaves obeyed, 
By science taught to serve the age's need. 
And day by day the thronging multitudes, 
Flowing and ebbing like a tide, swept by, 
And up and down through halls and corridors 
Feasting their eyes in endless holiday. 
Through long, far-reaching vistas all compact 
Of use and beauty. 

Proud she well may be. 
Once cast on rocks and cradled in the winds, 
She now commands, our Titan mother queen ; 
While thus the flattering world crowds round her feet, 
One half to see the gifts the other half 
Has laid before her — and we celebrate 
Her first proud century's close with worthy signs 
Of universal brotherhood and peace. 

Then ring, ye bells ! and let the organs blow 
And swell the choral hymn of praise and joy. 
And let the grand orchestral symphonies 
Resound through park and palace ; while afar 
The flying thunders of the steam bring in 
And out the thousands who in joyous groups 
Make blithe centennial festival and cheer. 
And as the autumn days move calmly on, 



THE CENTENNIAL YEAR. 



49 



And from the trees the red and yellow leaves 
Drop to the earth — let not the lesson fall 
Unheeded. With fraternal grasp we have met 
Through all these summer and autumnal months. 
Henceforth may peace and unity prevail 
O'er all the land. America demands 
No pledge less true for her Centennial Year. 

October, 1876. 



AFTER THE CENTENNIAL. 

(a hope.) 

Before our eyes a pageant rolled 
Whose banners every land unfurled ; 

And as it passed, its splendors told 
The art and glory of the world. 

The nations of the earth have stood 
With face to face and hand in hand, 

And sworn to common brotherhood 
The sundered souls of every land. 

And while America is pledged 

To light her Pharos towers for all, 

While her broad mantle, starred and edged 
With truth, o'er high and low shall fall ; 

And while the electric nerves still belt 
The State and Continent in one, — 

The discords of the past shall melt 
Like ice beneath the summer sun. 



AFTER THE CENTENNIAL. 51 

O land of hope ! thy future years 
Are shrouded from our mortal sight ; 

But thou canst turn the century's fears 
To heralds of a cloudless light ! 

The sacred torch our fathers lit 

No wild misrule can ever quench ; 
Still in our midst wise judges sit, 

Whom party passion cannot blench. 

From soul to soul, from hand to hand 
Thy sons have passed that torch along, 

Whose flame by Wisdom's breath is fanned, 
Whose staff is held by runners strong. 

O Spirit of immortal truth, 

Thy power alone that circles all 
Can feed the fire as in its youth — 

Can hold the runners lest they fall ! 

February 2, 1877. 



A NIGHT-PICTURE. 

A groan from a dim-lit upper room — 

A stealthy step on the stairs in the gloom — 

A hurried glance to left, to right 

In the court below — then out in the night 

There creeps a man through an alley dim, 

Till lost in the crowd. Let us follow him. 

The night is black as he hurries along ; 
The streets are filled with a jostling throng ; 
The sidewalks soak in the misty rain. 
He dares not look behind again — 
For every stranger eye he caught 
Was sure to know his inmost thought. 
The darkened casements looking down 
From tall grim houses seemed to frown. 
The globes in the druggists' windows shone 
Like fiery eyes on him alone, 
And dashed great spots of bloody red 
On the wet pavements as he fled. 
And as he passed the gas-lamps tall, 
He saw his lengthening shadow fall 



A NIGHT-PICTURE. 53 

Before his feet, till it grew and grew 

To a giant self of a darker hue. 

But turning down some lampless street 

He left behind the trampling feet, 

And on through wind and rain he strode, 

Where far along on the miry road 

The unwindowed shanties darkening stood — 

A beggarly and outlawed brood, 

'Mid half -hewn rocks and piles of dirt — 

The ragged fringe of the city's skirt. 

Then on, still on through the starless night, 

Shrinking from every distant light, 

Starting at every roadside bush, 

Or swollen stream in its turbid rush — 

On, still on, till he gained the wood 

In whose rank depths his dwelling stood. 

Then over his head the billows of wind 

Rocked and roared before and behind ; 

And all of a sudden the clouds let out 

Their pale white moon-shafts all about 

A dreary patch where the trees were dead, 

By a rocky swamp and a ruined shed ; 

And a path through the tangled woods appeared 

Between two oaks where the briers were cleared. 

And under the gloom he reaches at last 

His door — creeps in and locks it fast ; 

Then strikes a match and lights a lamp, 

And draws from his pocket heavy and damp 



54 A NIGHT-PICTURE. 

A wallet of leather thick and brown. 
Then at a table sitting down, 
To count the — Hark, what noise was that ! 
A rattling shutter ? A rasping rat 
Under the floor ? He turns to the door, 
And sees that his windows are all secure. 
Then kindles a fire, and dries his clothes, 
And eats and drinks, and tries to doze. 
But down the chimney loud and fast 
Like distant cannon roars the blast, 
And on the wind come cries and calls 
And voices of awful waterfalls, 
And winding horns and ringing bells, 
And smothered sobs and groans and yells. 
And though he turns into his bed 
And wraps his blanket around his head, 
Sleep will not come, or only sleep 
That slides him down on an unknown deep, 
From which he starts — and then it seemed 
He had not done the deed, but dreamed. 
Ah, would it were a dream, the wild 
Wet night, and he once more a child ! 

On a flying train, in the dawning day 
And the fragrant morn, he is far away. 
But secret eyes have pierced the night, 
And lightning words outstripped his flight. 
And far in the north* where none could know, 
The law's long arm has reached its foe. 



A CHILD-SAVIOR. 

(a true story.) 

She stood beside the iron road, 

A little child of ten years old. 

She heard two meeting thunders rolled 
From north and south, that plainly showed 

Danger too fearful to be told. 

Nearer, still nearer, rumbling on, 

One train approached with crashing speed. 

What could she do ? Who would give heed 
To her — a child, who stood alone 

And voiceless as a roadside weed ? 

A feeble cry she raised, and stood 
Across the track, — and then untied 
Her little apron from her side, 

And waved it swiftly as she could — 
If only she might be espied ! 



56 A CHILD-SAVIOR. 

If only on the hissing back 

Of that huge monster nearing fast 
The engineer his eye might cast 

On her there on the curving track, 
And heed her signal ere he passed ! 

- She stands with shout and warning beck ; 
On comes the train with thundering roar. 
The fireman sees — he looks once more — 
He sees a little waving speck, 

And slackening, slower moves and slower. 

" Hi — little girl ! what 's alt this row ? " 
" Another train ! — my ears it stuns ! 
It rounds the curve like rattling guns ! 

Back — back ! — for I must signal now 
The other." And away she runs. 

So by this little maiden's hand 

Were hundreds saved from fearful lot. 
But when with awe they spoke of what 

They had escaped, and made demand 
About the child, they found her not. 

For she had vanished through the wood. 
None guessed her dwelling-place or name, 
Nor by what wondrous chance she came ; 

While home she ran in blithesome mood, 
Nor knew she had done a deed of fame. 



A CHILD-SAVIOR. 57 

But in the old times they would have said 

It was an angel had stood there — 

The hood above her golden hair 
A nimbus glowing round a head 

With supernatural radiance fair. 

The small white apron that she waved 

Across the dangerous iron track 

To warn the rushing engines back, 
Might have been wings, whose flashing saved 

Five hundred souls from mortal wrack. 
November, 1882. 



AN OLD UMBRELLA. 

An old umbrella in the hall, 

Battered and baggy, quaint and queer ; 

By all the rains of many a year 

Bent, stained, and faded — that is all. 

Warped, broken, twisted by the blast 

Of twenty winters, till at last, 

Like some poor close-reefed schooner cast, 

All water-logged, with half a mast, 

Upon the rocks — it finds a nook 

Of shelter on an entry hook : — 

Old battered craft — how came you here ? 

Ah, could it speak, 't would tell of one — 

Old Simon Dowles, who now is gone — 

Gone where the weary are at rest ; 

Of one who locked within its breast 

His private sorrows o'er his lot, 

And in his humble work forgot 

That he was but a toiling bark 

Upon the billows in the dark, 

While the brave newer ships swept by 



AN OLD UMBRELLA. 59 

Sailing beneath a prosperous sky, 
And winged with opportunities 
Fate had denied to hands like his. 

A plain, old-fashioned wight was he 

As these sport-loving days could see ; 

He in his youth had loved and lost 

His loyal true-love. Ever since 

His lonely life was flecked and crossed 

By sorrow's nameless shadow-tints. 

Yet never a murmur from his lips 

Told of his darkened soul's eclipse. 

I often think I still can hear 

His voice so blithe, his tones of cheer, 

As, dropping in to say " good-day," 

He gossiped in his old man's way. 

And yet we laughed when he had gone. 

We youngsters could n't understand — 

No matter if it rained or shone, 

He held the umbrella in his hand. 

Or if he set it in the hall, 

Where other shedders of the rain 

Stood dripping up against the wall, 

His was too shabby and too plain 

To tempt exchange. All passed it by, 

Though showers of rain were pouring down 

And all the gutters of the town 

Were torrents in the darkening sky. 



60 



AN OLD UMBRELLA. 



He never left it once behind 
Save the last time he crossed our door. 
Oblivious shadows o'er his mind 
Presaged his failing strength. Before 
The morning he had passed away 
In peaceful sleep from night to day. 
And here the old brown umbrella still 
In its old corner stays to fill 
The place, as best it may, of him 
Who on this wild and wintry night 
Is surely with the saints of light — 
For whom my eyes grow moist and dim 
While I this simple rhyme indite. 



TO IONE. 

All day within me, sweet and clear 

The song you sang is ringing. 
At night in my half-dreaming ear 

I hear you singing, singing. 

Ere thought takes up its homespun thread 

When early morn is breaking, 
Sweet snatches hover round my bed 

And cheer me when awaking. 

The sunrise brings the melody 

I only half remember, 
And summer seems to smile for me, 

Although it is December. 

Through drifting snow, through dropping rain, 
Through gusts of wind, it haunts me. 

The tantalizing old refrain 
Perplexes, yet enchants me. 



62 TO TONE. 

The mystic chords that bore along 
Your voice so calmly splendid, 

In glimmering fragments with the song 
Are joined and vaguely blended. 

I touch my instrument and grope 

Along the keys' confusion, 
And dally with the chords in hopes 

To catch the sweet illusion. 

In vain of that consummate hour 
I court the full completeness, 

The perfume of the hidden flower, 
The perfect bloom and sweetness. 

Of strains that were too rich to last 

A baffled memory lingers. 
The theme, the air, the chords have passed ; 

They mock my voice and fingers. 

They steal away as sunset fires 
Lose one by one their flashes, 

And cheat the eye with smouldering pyres 
And banks of gray cloud-ashes. 

And yet I know the old alloy 

That dims and disentrances 
The golden visions and the joy 

Of hope's resplendent fancies 



TO TONE. 63 

Can never touch that festal hour 

In soul and sense recorded, 
Though scattered rose leaves from your bower 

Alone my search rewarded. 

The unconnected strains alone 

Survive to bring you nearer, 
As when our queen of song and tone 

Made vassals of each hearer. 

Yet through the night and through the day 

The notes and chords are ringing. 
Their echo will not pass away — 

I hear you singing — singing. 



AFTER-LIFE. 

O boon and curse in one — this ceaseless need 
Of looking still behind us and before ! 

Gift to the soul of eyes that cannot read 
Life's open book of cabalistic lore ; — 

Eyes that discern a light and joy divine 
Twinkling beyond the twilight clouds afar, 

Yet know not if it be the countersign 

Of moods and thoughts, or some eternal star. 

What taunt of destiny still stimulates 
Yet baffles all desire, or wise or fond, 

To pierce the veil ne'er lifted by the fates 
Between the life that ends and life beyond ? 

We sit before the doors of death, and dream 
That when they ope to let our brothers in, 

We catch, before they close, some flitting gleam 
Of glory where their after-lives begin. 



AFTER-LIFE. 65 

And with the light a transient burst of song 
Comes from within the gates that shut again 

Upon our dead. Then we, the proud, the strong, 
Sit crushed and lonely in our wordless pain. 

Weeping, we knock against the bars, and call, 

" Speak — speak, O love, for we are left alone ! " 

We hear our voices echo against the wall, 
And dream it is a spirit's answering tone. 

" Come back, or answer us ! " In vain we cry. 

Naught is so near as death, so far away 
As life beyond. They only know who die : 

And we who live can only guess and pray. 

If 't were indeed a voice not born within — 

Some sure authentic sign from unknown realms — 

Some note that heart and reason both could win — 
Some carol like yon oriole in the elms ; 

Though but a vague and broken music caught, 

Heard in the darkness, and then heard no more — 

Sinking in sudden silence — while in thought 
We piece the strains outside the muffled door 

That leads into the light and perfect joy 

Of the full concert — then 't were bliss indeed 

No present griefs could darken or destroy ; 

Somewhere life's mystery we should learn to read. 



66 AFTER-LIFE. 

Somewhere we then might drop the ripened seed 
Of life, to grow again beyond the sky — 

Nor deem the human soul a withering weed 
Born but to bloom a summer time and die. 






PRINCE YOUSUF AND THE ALCAYDE. 

A MOORISH BALLAD. 

In Grenada reigned Mohammed, 
Sixth who bore the name was he ; 

But the rightful king, Prince Yousuf, 
Pined in long captivity : 

Yousuf, brother to Mohammed. 

Him the king had seized and sent 
Prisoner to a Moorish castle, 

Where ten years his life was spent. 

Ill and feeble, now the usurper 
Felt his death was hastening on, 

And would fain bequeath his kingdom 
And his title to his son. 

Calling then a trusty servant, 

He to him a letter gave — 
" Take my fleetest horse, and hasten, 

If my life you wish to save. 



68 PRINCE YOUSUF AND THE ALCAYDE. 

" Hie thee to the brave Alcayde 

Of my castle by the sea ; 
To his hands give thou this letter, 

And his physician bring to me." 

Then in haste his servant mounted, 
And for many a league he rode, 

Till he reached the court and castle 
Where the captive prince abode. 

There sat Yousuf and the Alcayde 

In the castle, playing chess. 
" What is this ? " the keeper muttered. 

" Some bad tidings, as I guess." 

Pale he grew, and sat and trembled, 
While his eye the letter scanned ; 

And his voice was choked and speechless, 
As he dropped it from his hand. 

" Now what ails thee ? " cried Prince Yousuf. 

" Doth the king demand my head ? " 
" Read it ! " gasps the good Alcayde. 

" Ah, my lord — would I were dead ! " 



Yousuf read : u When this shall reach you, 
Slay my brother, and his head 



PRINCE YOUSUF AND THE ALCAYDE. 69 

Straightway by the bearer send me ; 
So I may be sure he 's dead." 

" So " — cried Yousuf . " This I looked for. 

Now let us play out our game. 
I was losing — you were winning 

When this ugly message came." 

All confused, the poor Alcayde 

Played his knights and bishops wrong ; 

And the prince his moves corrected. 
So in silence sat they long. 

In his mind Prince Yousuf pondered, 

" Why this hasty message send, 
If my kind and thoughtful brother 

Were not hastening to his end ? 

" Surely he is ill or dying. 

And if I must lose my head, 
My young nephew will succeed him 

O'er Grenada in my stead. 

" Though my keeper still is friendly, 

I must gain some hours' delay. 
He is poor : the king may bribe him. 

He may change ere close of day." 



70 PRINCE YOUSUF AND THE ALCAYDE. 

Then aloud — " Come, good Alcayde — 
One more game before I die. 

And be sure you make no blunders — 
I may beat you yet. I '11 try." 

In his lonely life the keeper 

Dearly loved his game of chess ; 

Therefore needs he little urging, 

Though sad thoughts his soul oppress. 

For an hour or two they battled, 
And the Alcayde gained amain ; 

For the prince with restless glances 
Gazed beyond the window-pane. 

Still the chess-board lay between them ; 

And the Alcayde played his best ; 
Took no note of gliding hours, 

Till the sunset fired the west. 

Yet he gained not, for Prince Yousuf 
With a sudden checkmate sprang 

Unforeseen — and that same moment — 
Hark — was that a bugle rang ? 

Through the western windows gazing 
Far across the dusty plain, 



PRINCE YOUSUF AND THE ALCAYDE. 71 

Yousuf saw the flash of lances — 
And the bugle rang again. 

And two knights appeared advancing 

Like two eagles on the wing. 
Allah Akbar ! From Grenada 

Faces flushed with joy they bring. 
The king is dead ! Long live King Yousuf ! 

Long lost lord — our rightful king ! 



ROSAMOND. 

In the fragrant bright June morning, Rosamond, the 

queen of girls, 
Down the marble doorsteps loiters, radiant with her 

sunny curls ; 
O'er the green sward through the garden passes to the 

river's brink — 
Throws away an old bouquet, and wonders if 't will float 

or sink. 
Then returning through the garden, round and round the 

lawn she goes, 
Singing, as she cuts fresh roses, she herself her world's 

fair rose ; 
In her dainty morning-robe and straw hat shading half 

her face — 
Picturesque in form and feature, lovely in her youth 

and grace ; 
In her hand a little dagger, sharp and glittering in the 

sun, 
Rifling hearts of thorny bushes, cutting roses one by one, 
Pink and white and blood-red crimson — some in bud 

and some full-blown, 



ROSAMOND. 73 

There through lawn and grove and garden sings she to 

herself alone ; 
Softly sings in broken snatches some old song of Spain 

or France, 
As she holds her roses off at full arm's length, with 

sidelong glance, 
Shifting groups of forms and colors ; for a painter's eye 

hath she, 
And all beauty pleaseth her, so artist-like and fancy-free. 

Now she enters her boudoir and sets her roses in a vase. 

There for seven days and nights their bloom and fra- 
grance fill the place. 

When the petals droop and fade, she '11 bear them to 
the river's brink ; 

Singing, throw them on the waves, and wonder if they '11 
float or sink. 

Will she bear away to-night a bunch of lovers' rose- 
hearts, pray ? 

Set them in her vase a week — then throw them with 
her flowers away ? 



A QUESTION. 

Ah, who can tell which guide were best 
To truth long sought, but unattained — 

The early faith, or late unrest ? 

What age has earned, or boyhood gained ? 

When down life's vista as we gaze, 

Where vanished youth's remembered gleam, 

The radiance of the unconscious days 

The dream that knew not 't was a dream — 

The time ere yet the shades of doubt 
Before our steps crept lengthening on, 

And morn and noon spread all about 
Their warm and fragrant benison 

Was this a vision of the mind 

That comes but once and disappears ? 

And can our riper wisdom find 
A clearer path in after years ? 



A QUESTION. 75 

The lore of philosophic age, 

The legendary creed of youth — 
Say which should trace upon life's page 

The book-mark of the surest truth ? 

Ah, question not. The unconscious life 

That leaps to its spontaneous deed 
Alone can harmonize the strife 

Between the impulse and the deed. 

Through dark and light — through change on change 

The planet-soul is pledged to move, 
Steeped all along its spinning range 

In sunshine born of thought and love. 



MY STUDIO. 

I LOVE it, yet I hardly can tell why — 

My studio with its window to the sky, 

Far up above the noises of the street, 

The rumbling carts, the ceaseless tramp of feet ; 

A privacy secure from idle crowds, 

And public only to the flying clouds. 

No shadowed corners round about me hide. 

Clear-lighted stand its walls on every side, 

Each sketch and picture showing at its best. 

A room for cheery work that needs no rest. 

Only too short these days of autumn seem, 

Where labor is but joy and peace supreme ; 

Where fields and woods, towns, skies, and winding rills 

Still haunt the memory as the canvas fills. 

And while the painter plies his earnest task, 

He seems as in some vision-land to bask ; 

And all that fed his eye and fired his soul 

When in the golden summer days he stole 

Their forms and colors, now lived o'er again, 

Runs like a strain of music through his brain. 



MY STUDIO. 



77 



O joyous tasks of art ! without your spell 
Life were a dull and dreary cloister-cell, 
All nature darkened and all beauty dim. 
But ye fill up its chalice to the brim 
With draughts as sweet as ever yet, I ween, 
Flowed in the poets' sparkling Hippocrene. 



TALENT AND GENIUS. 



i. 



On the high road travelling steady, 
Sure, alert, and ever ready, 
Prompt to seize all fit occasion, 
Courting power and wealth and station ; 
One clear aim before' him keeping 
With a vigilance unsleeping ; 
Prizing most the ephemeral flower 
Blooming for a brilliant hour ; 
With self-conscious action moving ; 
Well known truths intent on proving ; 
Radiant in his day and season 
With the world's reflected reason ; 
Noting times, effects, and causes, 
Phaon wins the crowd's applauses. 



ii. 



Wing'd like an eagle o'er mountains and meadows, 
Lit by their splendors or hid by their shadows; 
Borne by a power supernal, resistless ; 
Dreaming through trances abstracted and listless ; 



TALENT AND GENIUS. 79 

Swooping capricious to faults and to errors, 
Redeemed by a virtue unconscious of terrors ; 
Linking with ease his result and endeavor ; 
Opening through chaos fresh pathways forever ; 
Gilding the world with his thoughts and his fancies • 
Scornful of fashions and heedless of chances ; 
Yet in obscurity living and dying — 
Hylas, a voice in the wilderness crying, 
Only is heard when no hand can restore him, 
Only is known when the grave closes o'er him. 



VENICE. 

While the skies of this northern November 
Scowl down with a darkening menace, 

I wonder if you still remember 

That marvellous summer in Venice. 

When the mornings by clouds unencumbered 
Smiled on in unchanging persistence 

On the broad bright laguna that slumbered 
Afar in the magical distance. 

And the mirror of waters reflected 

The sails in their gay plumage grouping 

Like tropical birds that erected 

Their wings, or sat drowsily drooping. 

How by moonlight our gondola gliding 

Through gleams and through shadows of wonder, 

With its sharp flashing beak flew dividing 
The waves slipping silently under. 



VENICE. 81 

Then almost too full seemed the chalice 
Of new brimming life and of beauty, 

As we floated by Riva and palace, 
Dogana and stately Salute — 

Through deep-mouthed canals overshaded 
By balconies gray, quaint and olden, 

Where ruins of centuries faded 

Stood stripped of their azure and golden. 

Do you call back the days when before us 

The masters of art shone revealing 
Their marvels of color — and o'er us 

Glowed grand on the rich massy ceiling 

In the halls of the doges, where trembled 

The state in its turbulent fever, 
And purple-robed senates assembled 

In days that are shadows forever ? 

You remember the yellow light tipping 
The domes when the sunset was dying ; 

The crowds on the quays, and the shipping ; 
The pennons and flags that were flying ; — 

Saint Mark's with its mellow-toned glory, 
The splendor and gloom of its riches ; 



82 VENICE. 

The columns Byzantine and hoary ; 
The arches, the gold-crusted niches ; 

And the days when the sunshine invited 
The painters abroad, until mooring 

Their bark in the shadow, delighted 
They wrought at their labors alluring ; 

The pictures receding in stretches 
Of amber and opal around us — 

The joy of our mornings of sketches — 
The spell of achievement that bound us ? 

Ah, never I busy my brushes 

With scenes of that radiant weather, 

But through me the memory rushes 
When we were in Venice together. 

Fair Venice, the pearl-shell of cities ! 

Though poor the oblations we bring her 

The pictures, the songs and the ditties — 

Ah, still we must paint her and sing her ! 

A vision of beauty long vanished, 
A dream that is joy to remember, 

A solace that cannot be banished 
By all the chill blasts of November ! 



THE TWO DREAMS. 

I met one in the Land of Sleep 

Who seemed a friend long known and true. 
I woke. That friend I could not keep — 

For him I never knew. 

Yet there was one in life's young morn 
Loved me, I thought, as I loved him. 

Slow from that trance I waked forlorn, 
To find his love grown dim. 

He by whose side in dreams I ranged, 

Unknown by name, my friend still seems ; 

While he I knew so well has changed. 
So both were only dreams. 



AT THE GRAVE OF KEATS. 

TO G. W. C. 

Long, long ago, in the sweet Roman spring 

Through the bright morning air we slowly strolled, 

And in the blue heaven heard the skylarks sing 
Above the ruins old — 

Beyond the Forum's crumbling grass-grown piles, 

Through high-walled lanes o'erhung with blossoms 
white 

That opened on the far Campagna's miles 
Of verdure and of light ; 

Till by the grave of Keats we stood, and found 
A rose some loyal hand had planted there. 

Making more sacred still that hallowed ground, 
And that enchanted air. 

A single rose, whose fading petals drooped, 
And seemed to wait for us to gather them. 

So, kneeling on the humble mound, we stooped 
And plucked it from its stem. 



AT THE GRAVE OF KEATS. 85 

One rose, and nothing more. We shared its leaves 
Between us, as we shared the thoughts of one 

Called from the fields before his unripe sheaves 
Could feel the harvest sun. 

That rose's fragrance is forever fled 

For us, dear friend — but not the poet's lay. 

He is the rose — deathless among the dead — 
Whose perfume lives to-day. 



BROKEN WINGS. 

Gray-headed poets, whom the full years bless 
With life and health and chance still multiplied 

To hold your forward course — fame and success 
Close at your side ; 

Who easier won your bays because the fields 

Lacked reapers ; — time has been your helper long. 

Rich are the crops your busy tillage yields 

Your arms still strong. 

Honor to you, your talent and your truth. 

As ye have soared and sung, still may ye sing ! 
Yet we remember some who fell in youth 

With broken wing. 

Names nigh forgotten now, by time erased, 
Or else placarded o'er by those long known, 

Had fate permitted, might they not have blazed 
Beside your own ? 

Ah yes, due fame for all who have achieved ; 

And yet a thought for those who died too young — 



BROKEN WINGS. 87 

Their green fruit dropped — their visions half con- 
ceived — 
Their lays unsung ! 

A tribute song for them ! Reach forth, renowned 
And honored ones, from your green sunny glades, 

And grasp their spirit-hands — the bards uncrowned 
Amid the shades. 

Not those whom glory follows to a bier 

Enshrined in marble, decked with costly flowers. 

The loud world speaks their praise from year to year. 
They need not ours. 

But for the dead whose promise failed through death, 
The great who might have been — whose early bloom 

Dropping like roses in the north-wind's breath, 
Found but a tomb. 

Yet it may be, in some bright land, unchecked . 

By fate — some fair Elysian field unknown, 
Their brows by brighter laurel wreaths are decked — 

Their seat a throne ; 

While spirits of the illustrious dead, the seers, 

Prophets and poets of the olden days 
Mingle, perchance, with theirs, as with their peers, 

Immortal lays. 



SEA PICTURES. 



MORXIXG. 



The morning sun has pierced the mist, 
And beach and cliff and ocean kissed. 
Blue as the lapis-lazuli 
The sea reflects the azure sky. 
In the salt healthy breeze I stand 
Upon the solid floor of sand. 
Along the untrodden shore are seen 
Fresh tufts of weed maroon and green, 
And ruffled kelp and stranded sticks 
And shells and stones and sea-moss mix. 
The low black rocks, forever wet, 
Lie tangled in their pulpy net. 
The shy sand-pipers fly and light — 
And swallows circle out of sight. 
Out where the sky the horizon meets 
Glide glimmering sails in scattered fleets. 
Old Ocean smiles as though amid 
His leagues of brine no treachery hid. 
And safe upon the sandy marge, 
By stranded boat and floating barge, 



££4 PICTURES. 89 

Gay children leap and laugh and run, 
Browned by the salt air and the sun. 

II. 

EVENING. 

Now thickening twilight presses down 

Upon the harbor and the town, 

And all around a misty pall 

Of dull gray cloud hangs over all. 

The huddling fishing-sloops he safe, 

While far away the breakers chafe. 

And now the landsman's straining eye 

Mingles the gray sea with the sky.- 

Far out upon the darkening deep 

The white ghosts of the ocean leap. 

Boone Island's light, a lonely star, 

Is flashing o'er the waves afar. 

Up the broad beach the sea rolls in 

In never-ending foam and din ; 

And all along the craggy shore 

Resounds one long continuous roar. 

We turn away, and hail each gleam 

Where lamps from cottage windows stream. 

For sad and solemn is the moan 

Of ocean when the day has flown, 

And, borne on dusky wings, the night 

Wraps in a shroud the dying light. 






ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS. 

I stakted on a lonely road. 

A few companions with me went. 
Some fell behind, some forward strode, 

But all on one high purpose bent : 

To live for Nature, finding truth 
In beauty, and the shrines of art ; 

To consecrate our joyous youth 
To aims outside the common mart. 

The way was steep, though pleasure crowned 
Our toil with every step we took. 

The morning air was spiced around 
From many a pine and cedar nook. 

I turned aside and lingered long 
To pluck a rose, to hear a bird, 

To muse, while listening to the song 
Of brooks through leafy coverts heard ; 

To live in thoughts that brought no fame 
Or guerdon from the thoughtless crowd ; 



ARS LONG A, VITA BREVIS. 91 

To toil for ends that could not claim 
The world's applauses coarse and loud ; 

Then onward pressed. But far before 

I saw my comrades on the heights. 
They no divided homage bore 

To Beauty's myriad sounds and sights. 

In blithe self-confidence they wrought. 

Some strove for fame and fame's reward. 
They pleased the public's facile thought ; 

Then paused and stretched them on the sward. 

And still though oft I bind my sheaf 
In fields my comrades have not known ; 

Though Art is long and life is brief, 
And youth has now forever flown, 

I would not lose the raptures sweet, 

Nor scorn the toil of earlier years ; 
Still would I climb with eager feet, 

Though towering height on height appears — 

And up the mountain road I see 

A younger throng with voices loud, 
Who side by side press on with me, 

Till I am lost amid the crowd. 



LOVE'S VOYAGE. 

As once I sat upon the shore 

There came to me a fairy boat, 
A bark I never saw before, 

Whose coming I had failed to note, 
Wrapped in my studies conning rules of life by rote. 

The stern was fashioned like a heart ; 
The curving sides like Cupid's bow. 
And from the mast, which like a dart 
Was winged above and barbed below, 
A pennon like an airy stream of blood did flow. 

Upon the prow on either side 

Was carved a snowy Paphian dove. 
Between, reflected in the tide 

An arching swan's neck rose above 
The deck o'erspread with broidered tapestries of love. 

Against the mast the idle sail 

Flapped like a lace-edged valentine. 
It seemed a canvas all too frail, 



LOVE'S VOYAGE. 93 

Should winds arouse the sleeping brine. 
A toy the boat appeared, for sport in weather fine. 

And so I stepped, in idle mood, 

Aboard the bark — when suddenly 
A breeze sprang up : and while I stood 
Uncertain, thinking I was free 
To make retreat, the vessel bore me out to sea. 

Silent and swift away from land 

It cut the waves. No pilot steered. 
No voice of captain gave command. 
Yet to and fro it tacked and veered. 
All day it flew. At eve a distant land appeared. 

An island in the restless seas, 

With rosy cliffs, and gold and green 
Of dappled fields, and tropic trees, 

With trailing vines and flowers between, 
Across the purple waves through amber skies was seen. 

And music floating from afar 

I heard, of voice and instrument 
As the sun sank, and star by star 
Throbbed in the living firmament ; 
And all kind fates seemed pledged to cheer me as I 
went. 



94 LOVE'S VOYAGE. 

Till in a deep and shadowy bay 
The little argosy, self-furled, 
Self-anchored, in the silenee lay, 
And landed me upon a world 
By other stars and moons endiamonded, impearled. 

A region to my student's nooks 

Unknown — where first I learned to see 
That love is never conned from books, 
Nor passion taught by fantasy — 
But in the living, beating heart alone can be. 

For on that shore a maiden stood, 

Who smiled with sympathetic glance, 
And when I pressed her hand, and wooed, 
Turned not her truthful eyes askance, 
And proved my voyage was no idle sport of chance. 

Ah, from this island if I veer 

Into the seas of worldly strife, 
Give me the bark that brought me here, 

Where now the tried and faithful wife 
Year after year renews the lover's lease of life. 



SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 

" Naught but the fittest lives," I hear 
Ring on the northern breeze of thought : 

" To Nature's heart the strong are dear, 
The weak must pass unloved, unsought." 

And yet in undertones a voice 

Is heard that says, " O child of earth, 

Your mind's best work, your heart's best choice 
Shall stand with God for what they are worth.' 

Time's buildings are not all of stone. 

With frailest fibres Nature spins 
Her living webs from zone to zone, 

And what is lost she daily wins. 

I fain would think, amid the strife 

Between realities and forms, 
Slight gifts may claim perennial life 

'Mid slow'decay and sudden storms. 

This tuft of silver hairs I loose 
From open windows to the breeze, 



96 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 

Some bird of spring perchance may use 
To build her nest in yonder trees. 

These pictures painted with an art 
Surpassed by younger sight and skill, 

May pass into some friendly heart, 

Some room with Nature's smiles may fill. 

These leaves of light and earnest rhyme 
Dropped on the windy world, though long 

Neglected now, some future time 
May weave into its nest of song. 



A WORD TO PHILOSOPHERS. 

Cold philosophers, so apt 

With your formulas exacting, 

In your problems so enwrapt, 
And your theories distracting ; 

Webs of metaphysic doubt 

On your wheels forever spinning, 

Turning Nature inside out 

From its end to its beginning ; 

Drawing forth from matter raw 
Protoplasmic threads, to fashion 

What Creation never saw — 

Mind apart from faith or passion ; 

Faculties that know no wants 

But a logical position — 
Intellectual cormorants 

Fed on facts of pure cognition ; — 

Like Arachne's is your task, 
By Minerva's wisdom baffled. 



98 A WORD TO PHILOSOPHERS. 

Defter weavers we must ask ; 
Tissues less obscurely ravelled. 

Larger vision you must find 
Ere your evolution-plummets 

Sound the abysses of the mind, 

Or your measure reach its summits. 

Not from matter crude and coarse 
Comes tins delicate creation. 

Twinned with it a finer force 
Rules it to its destination. 

All beliefs, affections, deeds 

Feed its depths as streams a river, 

Every purpose holds the seeds 
Of a fruit that grows forever. 

Souls outsoar your schoolmen's wit, 
In a loftier heaven wheeling. 

Lights ideal o'er them flit. 

Every thought is wing'd with feeling. 

Conscience born of heavenly light 
Mingles with their lofty yearning ; 

Phantasy and humor bright 

Cheer their toilsome path of learning. 



A WORD TO PHILOSOPHERS. 99 

Poesy with dreamy eyes 

Lures them into fairy splendor, 
Music's magic harmonies 

Thrill with touches deep and tender. 

Love, that shapes their mental moods, 

Offers now its warm oblations, 
Now the heart's dark solitudes 

Glow with solemn adorations. 

Vain your biologic strife, 

Your asserting, your denying ; 
Ygdrasil the Tree of Life 

Flouts your narrow classifying. 

Every living leaf and bud 

On its mighty branches growing, 
Palpitates with will and blood 

Past primordial foreknowing. 

Your dissecting-knives can show 

Less than half these wondrous natures, 

In these beating hearts there glow 

Flames that scorch your nomenclatures, — 

Lights that make your axioms fine 

Fade like stars when day is breaking ; — 

Splendors, hopes, and powers divine, 
New born with each day's awaking. 



100 A WORD TO PHILOSOPHERS. 

Raise your scientific lore, 
Grant us larger definitions ; 

Souls are surely something more 
Than mere bundles of cognitions. 

Take the sum — the mighty whole — 
Man, this sovereign Protean creature, 

Follow the all-embracing soul, 

If you can, through form and feature. 

Whence it came in vain you guess, 
Where it goes you cannot measure, 

And its depths are fathomless ; 
And exhaustless flows its treasure. 

And its essence holds the world 
In abeyance and solution, 

For the gods themselves are furled 
In its mystic involution. 



THE COAL-FIRE. 

1. 

Come, we '11 light the parlor fire ; 

Winter sets in sharp and rough. 
Wood is dear, but coal 's provided, 

For three months, I think, enough. 
Bring one hod of Lackawanna, 

One of Sidney's softer kind, 
Mix them well — clap on the blower, 

Let the grate outroar the wind. 

2. 

See — they are coming — the guests I expected, 

Not a man's party, o'er punch and cigars ; 
Sexes must blend in the friends I've selected, 

Moonlight must mellow the glittering stars. 
Soon will it kindle, the blithe conversation, 

Spirits to spirits responsively fit ; 
Men with their logic and grave moderation, 

Women with sentiment, gossip and wit. 

3. 

Now the softly flaming Sidney 
Mixes with the anthracite ; 



102 THE COAL-FIRE. 

Quickens all its slow-paced ardor 
With a fluttering glow and light ; 

While their heat and radiance blended 
Flash in gleams of red and blue, 

Filling all the room with sunshine, 
Gaily sparkling up the flue. 

4. 

Lonely was Adam till Eve came to cheer him — 

Came to commingle her warmth with his light. 
Man is a fossil till woman comes near him, 

A rose on his brier — a moon to his night. 
Then when the tenderer feminine color 

Rims the hard stalk with its delicate gleams, 
All his best life growing sweeter and fuller 

Wakes in the glow of those holier beams. 

5. 

Hard and soft in cordial union 

Now have fused, like molten wax. 
Each a temper gives and borrows — 

Each the half the other lacks. 
Should they lose their flames and smoulder 

With a dull and sullen light, 
Stir them up — the sparking Sidney 

Soon will start the anthracite. 



THE COAL-FIRE. 103 

6. 

What — have my guests then exhausted their topics ? 

Why is this lull in the murmur of tongues ? 
Where is that breath from the flowery tropics ? 

Lead to the piano our empress of songs ! 
Music shall stir us to harmonies hidden, 

Flooding to rapture like beakers of wine. 
Stories shall move us to laughter unbidden ; 

Laughter like music is something divine. 

7. 

Ah, 't is midnight ! Are you going ? 

Parties will break up so soon. 
Count not hours so swiftly flowing, 

Heed not the high wintry moon. 
One more song before we sever, 

And the cinders turn to white ; 
One old story, good as ever ! 

No ? Too late ? Ah, well — good night ! 

8. 

Now they have gone with the pale dying embers. 

Here in my parlor, still cosy and warm 
With the glow of the hearth, how my fancy remem- 
bers 
Each guest of the evening — each talent and 
charm ; — 



104 THE COAL-FIRE. 

The slow-burning fervors of masculine reason, 

The swift-glancing flame of the feminine heart ; — 

And I vow that no fire shall be lit at this season, 
But coal of each sex shall contribute its part. 



TWO VIEWS OF IT. 

Before the daybreak, in the murky night 
My chanticleer, half dreaming, sees the light 
Stream from my window on his perch below, 
And taking it for dawn he needs must crow. 

Wakeful and sad I shut my book, and smile 
To think my lonely vigil should beguile 
The silly fowl. Alas, I find no ray 
Within my lamp or heart, of dawning day. 



OLD AND YOUNG. 

1. 

They soon grow old who grope for gold 
In marts where all is bought and sold ; 
Who live for self, and on some shelf 
In darkened vaults hoard up their pelf 
Cankered and crusted o'er with mould. 
For them their youth itself is old. 

2. 

They ne'er grow old who gather gold 
Where spring awakes and flowers unfold ; 
Where suns arise in joyous skies, 
And fill the soul within their eyes. 
For them the immortal bards have sung, 
For them old age itself is young. 



THE VICTORIES OF PEACE. 

1. 

Gone is the tempest that clouded 
The land with its dark desolation. 

Out from the pall that enshrouded 
Leaps the new strength of the nation. 

2. 

Never again shall the cannon 
Roar with their terrible voicing, 

Save where the free flag and pennon 
Wave o'er a country rejoicing. 

3. 

Boast not when musketry rattles 

O'er corpses of landsmen and seamen. 

Gains that are greater than battles 
Come with the ballots of freemen. 

4. 

Praise ye the peace that engenders 
Trust in a people enlightened ; 

Honor to valiant defenders, 

Hope for the days that have brightened. 



SUMMER DAWN. 

Some summer mornings — when you've taken tea 
Too late the night before — perhaps you'll see, 
If at some Berkshire farmhouse far away 
You chance to wake while yet the sky is gray, 
A glory, to your landscape-painter men 
Unknown, yet worthy of a poet's pen. 

Look from your window. Long gray banks of cloud 

The fields, the hills, the distant view enshroud. 

Faint stars still glimmer in the heavens above. 

Below dim shapes of fog o'er stream and grove 

Hang wreathing, shifting in the sluggish breeze. 

Are yonder shadows mist, or mist-clad trees ? 

For what is cloud and what is land no eye 

(Sleepy at least like yours) can yet descry. 

And now the rushing streams, by day unheard, 

You hear, and now the twitter of a bird, 

And now another, till at last the hills 

And woods are all alive with fugues and trills. 

The sheep begin to bleat, the cows to low ; 

Three hoarse, young roosters try their best to crow, 



SUMMER DAWN. 109 

Responding to some thirsty, quacking duck, 

Or hen who folds her chicks with motherly cluck. 

Now morning spreads apace. The stars are drowned. 

Trees loom above the fog ; and all around 

The landscape is transfigured in the light 

Of pearly skies. Westward the wings of Night 

Are folded as she steals unseen away. 

Now in the far northeast an amber gray 

Gleams under bars of long dark-pencilled cloud. 

The crows above the woods are cawing loud. 

Brighter and brighter up the dewy slope 

The coming sunrise floods the lands with hope. 

The clouds from north to south begin to blush. 

Old Graylock answers with a rosy flush. 

One mountain peak looms up with crimsoned sides ; 

A moment more, and in the mist it hides. 

And now the valleys catch the sun below, 

And elms and barn-roofs redden in the glow. 

O for a pencil rapid as the light 

To paint the glories bursting on the sight ! 

Making the plain New England landscape seem 

The unfamiliar scenery of a dream. 

For this might be in Arcady — my rhyme 

Some Eastern shepherd's of the olden time. 

Here might I pipe with Tityrus in the grove ; 

Here to fair Amaryllis whisper love ; 



110 



SUMMER DA WN. 



Here the wild woodland haunts of Dryads seek — 

But what is that ! The locomotive's shriek 

Calls me from Dreamland and the Arcadian dawn. 

The sun is up. The mystery is gone. 

Another book of poesy the West 

Has opened. Let the bards of old go rest. 



THE OLD APPLE-WOMAN. 

A BROADWAY LYRIC. 

She sits by the side of a turbulent stream 

That rushes and rolls forever 
Up and down like a weary dream 

In the trance of a burning fever. 

Up and down through the long Broadway 
It flows with its tiresome paces — 

Down and up through the noisy day, 
A river of feet and of faces. 

Seldom a drop of that river's spray 
Touches her withered features ; 

Yet still she sits there day by day 
In the throng of her fellow-creatures. 

Apples and cakes and candy to sell, 

Daily before her lying. 
The ragged newsboys know her well — 

The rich never think of buying. 



112 THE OLD APPLE-WOMAN. 

Year in, year out, in her dingy shawl 
The wand and the rain she weathers, 

Patient and mute at her little stall ; 
But few are the coppers she gathers. 

Still eddies the crowd intent on gain. 

Each for himself is striving 
With selfish heart and seething brain — 

An endless hurry and driving. 

The loud carts rattle in thunder and dust ; 

Gay Fashion sweeps by in its coaches. 
With a vacant stare she mumbles her crust, 

She is past complaints and reproaches. 

Still new faces and still new feet — 
The same yet changing forever ; 

They jostle along through the weary street, 
The waves of the human river. 

Withered and dry like a leafless bush 
That clings to the bank of a torrent, 

Year in, year out, in the whirl and the rush, 
She sit3, of the city's current. 

The shrubs of the garden will blossom again 
Though far from the flowing river ; 

But the spring returns to her in vain — 
Its bloom has nothing to give her. 



THE OLD APPLE-WOMAN. 113 

Yet in her heart there buds the hope 

Of a Father's love and pity ; 
For her the clouded skies shall ope, 

And the gates of a heavenly city. 



THE WEATHER-PROPHET. 

A FABLE. 

" What can the matter be with the thermometer ? 
Is it the sun or the moon or the comet, or 
Something broke loose in the old earth's pedometer ? " 
Thus in his study a weather philosopher 
Mused — every minute more puzzled and cross over. 
Wind-charts and notes he proceeded to toss over. 
" Up in this tower, this breezy and barren height, 
One should be cool as an elderly Sharonite. 
Something is wrong with the scales of my Fahrenheit. 
'T was but this morning the wind blowing northerly 
Roughened the tops of the ocean waves frothily ; 
Now it has shifted, and seems to be southerly " — 
(These are not rhymes — I am fully aware of it. 
But the hot weather — for he had the care of it — 
Fully excused him, and I have no share of it.) 

Time to this sage was so precious that never he 

Ate at regular hour ; forever he 

Seemed to be lost in a weather-wise reverie. 



THE WEATHER-PROPHET. 115 

So a small kitchen the town-folks did make for him 
Right underneath, where a servant could bake for him, 
Boil for him, cook up a chop or a steak for him, 
So that he need n't be starving while measuring 
Rain-storms and calms that the heavens were treasuring. 
'T was a bright thought which they took a great pleas- 
ure in ; 
For 't was the weather that made the great theme for 

them. 
This was their day-talk and this their night's dream for 

them. 
Here was the man who could skim the sky's cream for 

them ; 
Thousands of miles away see a cloud-macula — 
Tell what was coming in language oracular — - 
Translate his science in common vernacular. 
Quite independent of housekeeping syndicates 
He could pronounce what the weather-glass indicates 
Long ere old Boreas had opened his windy gates. 
Knew all the signs from the Crab to Aquarius, 
Shifting or permanent — single or various ; 
Bright signs that gladden us, dark signs that weary us, 
Versed in the trade-winds and currents could spy a way 
How a storm-centre in Texas or Iowa 
Might prove a cyclone or peaceably die away. 
Skilled in all secrets of meteorology. 
Clear in his mind as that H I should follow G. 
If he made blunders he made no apology. 



116 THE WEATHER-PROPHET. 

He was the boldest of Old Probabilities ; 
Scorned all assistance and short-hand facilities. 
Ah, what a thing to have genius and skill it is ! 
Pity if he should be forced to take off his eye ; 
Leave for a dinner his notes to a novice eye ! 
Food was a trifle for one who could prophesy. 
So like the prophet of old when the city he 
Left for the woods, and the ravens had pity, he 
Found himself served by a black-coat committee. 

Now while engrossed in his figures, not dreaming it, 
Bridget below in the kitchen was steaming it ; 
Making the building so hot that ice-cream in it 
Melted like butter. Her stove and the range in it 
Cooking his dinner — though this may seem strange 

in it — 
Was the sole reason the air had a change in it. 
Over his figures his brow getting rigid, he 
Kept at his task, never thinking of Bridgety — 
Growing each minute more fussy and fidgety. 
Up through the speaking-tube rushed the hot air on him, 
Bringing the steam of the boiler to bear on him. 
So with a mystified sort of despair on him 
Soon he proceeded to write and to scratch away, 
And by his telegraph sent a despatch away — 
(Never before was Old Prob so infatue) 
Saying — " It seems by my Aeroscopical 
Great heats with thunder will soon be the topic all — 



THE WEATHER-PROPHET. 117 

Weather, in short, most decidedly tropical. 

Can it be sun-spots ? Volcanic impurities 

Caused by a meteor bursting ? I 'm sure it is 

Something abnormal — but very obscure it is ! 

Possibly something may ail my thermometer ; 

Possibly 't is the effect of the comet, or 

Something broke loose in the old Earth's pedometer." 

MORAL. 

Prophets are struck now and then with insanity. 
Ever since Adam man's measureless vanity 
Thinks his own mood is the mind of humanity. 



OMAR KHAYYAM. 

Reading in Omar till the thoughts that burned 
Upon his pages seemed to be inurned 
Within me in a silent fire, my pen 
By instinct to his flowing metre turned. 

Vine-crowned free-thinker of thy Persian clime — 
Brave bard whose daring thought and mystic rhyme 

Through English filter trickles down to us 
Out of the lost springs of an olden time — . 

Baffled by life's enigmas, like the crowd 
Who strove before and since to see the cloud 

Lift from the mountain pinnacles of faith — 
We honor still the doubts thou hast avowed, 

And fain would round the half-truth of thy dream ; 
And fain let in — if so we might — a beam 

Of purer light through windows of the soul, 
Dividing things that are from things that seem. 



OMAR KHAYYAM. 119 

True, true, brave poet, in thy cloud involved, 
The riddle of the world stood all unsolved ; 

And we who boast our broader views still grope 
Too oft like thee, though centuries have revolved. 

Yet this we know. Thy symbol of the jar 
Suits not our western manhood, left to mar 

Or make, in part, the clay 't is moulded of : 
And the soul's freedom is its fateful star. 

Not like thy ball thrown from the player's hand 
Inert and passive on a yielding strand ; 

Or if a ball, the rock whence it rebounds 
Proves that e'en this some license may command. 

But though thy mind, which measured Jove and Mars, 
Lay fettered from the Unseen by bolts and bars 

Of circumstance, one truth thy spirit saw, 
The mystery spanning life and earth and stars. 

Dervish and threatening dogma were thy foes. 
The question though unanswered still arose ; 

And through the revel and the wine-cups still 
The honest thought, " Who knows, but One — who 
knows ? " 

And as I read again each fervent line 

That smiles through sighs, and drips with fragrant wine ; 



120 OMAR KHAYYAM. 

And Vedder's thoughtful muse has graced the verse 
With added jewels from the artist's mine — 

I read a larger meaning in the sage, 
A modern comment on a far-off age ; 

And take the truth, and leave the error out 
That casts its light stain on the Asian page. 



LONGFELLOW. 

Across the sea the swift sad message darts 

And beats with sudden pang against our hearts. 

Under the elm-trees in his homestead old 

The Laureate of our land lies dead and cold ; 

Wept by the love of friends, and crowned with fame ; 

Revered by youth and age, his well-known name 

Caught in fast-circling whispers, sad and low, 

In streets where noisy crowds move too and fro — 

" Can it be true that he is dead — is dead ? " 

Life seemed to love that noble, silvery head, 

And youth still lingered in the kindly eyes 

Now closed, alas, to all beneath the skies ! 

No more across the fields by Charles's stream 
Those eyes shall see their well-loved landscape gleam. 
No more the treasured books upon his shelves 
Suggest the visions rarer than themselves. 
No frienda around his hospitable fire 
Hear the last touches of his graceful lyre. 

The coming spring will flush with purple bloom 
His lilacs, and waft in their sweet perfume ; 



122 LONGFELLOW. 

His roses unregarded drop away ; 
Unheard the oriole's warble through the day ; 
Unmarked the bees' low hum from flower to flower, 
The dial's shade, the sunshine and the shower. 
Yet from the garden of his thoughts and deeds 
Still will his poems fly like winged seeds. 
And far and wide, through city, plain and hill, 
Borne to a thousand firesides, bloom and fill 
The people's hearts, and touch to issues fine 
Of aspiration human and divine. 

Paris, March 28, 1882. 



KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

Out of the cloud that dimmed his sunset light, 
Into the unknown firmament withdrawn 

Beyond the mists and shadows of the night, 

We mourn the friend and teacher who has gone. 

As in the days of old when Plato freed 

The Athenian youths into a heavenlier sphere, 

Long will the age with reverence hear and heed 
The sweet deep music of our poet-seer. 

For to his eye all objects and events 

Spoke a symbolic language ; and his mind 

Pierced with the poet's vision through the dense 
Dull surface to the larger truth behind. 

And yet no solitary mystic trained 

To spin a metaphysic web was he ; 
But open-eyed to all that life contained, 

And the broad earth, of living harmony. 

Nature adopted him from boyhood's hour. 

The pines, the elms, the willows knew him well. 



124 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

The lonely streams where blushed the cardinal-flower, 
And where the shy Rhodora's petals fell. 

And well his mother's lore he loved and learned ; 

His master-hand her crudest stuff refined. 
All that she gave he back to her returned 

Woven with figures of the shaping mind. 

It seemed as if the hill-tops where he met 

The sunrise still the livery put on 
Of nobler days, and never could forget 

The Syrian splendors of the poet's dawn. 

And books to him unfolded all their store ; 

What soul was in them he had eyes to see. 
And past and present turned up golden ore, 

Transmuted by his mind's fine alchemy. 

He drew his circles of so wide a sweep 

That they encompassed every sect and creed. 

Beneath the thought which seemed to others deep 
His swifter spirit dived with brilliant speed. 

His keen, clear intuition knit the threads 

Of truths disjoined in one symmetric whole ; 

And barren wayside weeds and scattered shreds 
Of facts found mystic meanings in his soul. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 125 

He dared to ope the windows to the breeze 

Of Nature, when sectarians shuddering frowned, 

While through the close air of their cloistered ease 
The leaves of creeds fell fluttering to the ground ; 

Yet lived to see harsh theologians change 

From blind mistrust to love the truth he taught ; 

And shallow wits grow dumb beneath his range 
Of brilliant apothegm and daring thought. 

Choice words and images like Shakspeare's best 
Dropped from his lips and waited on his pen. 

His voice in tuneful eloquence expressed 

The manliest minds of Plutarch's noblest men. 

For him our Western world its keen, dry lore 

Recorded with a stenographic hand, 
While the far Orient climes for tribute bore 

The scriptures old of many a pagan land. 

He saw the Soul whose breath all being breathes ; — 
The Life that glows in atoms and in suns ; 

The Law that binds ; the Beauty that enwreathes ; 
The Ideal that all mortal wit outruns. 

Yet close to earth and common duties bound, 
Pledged to all true and gracious tasks he stood. 

His presence made a sunshine all around, 
His daily life a bond of brotherhood. 



126 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

He needed not to worship at a shrine 

Purer than private hours might well approve. 

His missal was illumed with thoughts divine, 
His rosary strung with kindly deeds of love. 

Yet love and justice were at one with him ; 

And on the base oppressor's brow the stain 
And brand were laid, not in derision grim, 

But sad and fateful as the mark of Cain. 

Thus, true as needle to the polar star, 

He espoused the righteous cause, rebuked the wrong, 
And flashed chivalric 'gainst a nation's bar 

Of precedent, though fixed and sanctioned long. 

Poet and sage ! thy lofty muse demands 
An insight deeper than the times attain. 

Across the stagnant pools and drifting sands 
Of thought I see thee like a sacred fane 

Rise sunlit in the broad expanse of time ; 

And young and old shall greet from far thy light, 
And pilgrims turn from many an old-world clime 

To hail thy star-like dome of stainless white. 

The wise will know thee, and the good will love. 

The age to come will feel thy impress given 
In all that lifts the race a step above 

Itself, and stamps it with the seal of heaven. 



FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE, D.D. 

on his 80th birthday, dec. 12, 1885. 

What lapse or accident of time 
Can dull that soul's sonorous chime 
Which owns the priceless heritage — 
Youth's summer warmth in wintry age ? 
The gods can grant no rarer boon 
Than heart with mind in genial tune, 
Through a long life's vicissitudes 
Unjarred by chances and by moods ; 
A soul elastic and unworn 
Whose eve retains the smile of morn ; 
And all the poesy of youth 
Is wedded to the soul of truth. 

So have I seen the Alpine glow 
On hoary pinnacles of snow, 
While many a younger wilderness 
Of woods beneath lay colorless 
And darkling in the twilight sky, 
Touched by no sunset alchemy. 



128 FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE, D. D. 

For some there are whose youth is old 
Long ere their youthful blood grows cold ; 
And some in age so young that time, 
Deceived, still sees them in their prime. 

No form or face that prophesied 

A strength to after years denied — 

No spirit lost in aims that seem 

The cloud-land of a worldly dream — 

No head discrowned — no incomplete 

And slackened course to-day we greet 

In him whose fourscore years have spanned 

The gulfs of fact and wonder-land ; — 

Who brought the seeds of Europe's lore 

To fertilize our western shore ; — 

By pastoral care, by voice and pen 

Toiling to serve his fellow-men ; 

Who early stood in freedom's van, 

And with forecasting eye outran 

The cloudy creeds that long obscured 

The light to later days assured. 

What claim of youth by word or deed 
Can e'er dislodge or supersede 
The royal right to place and fame 
Earned by long years of earnest aim, 
Of learning deep, of vision wide, 
Of wisdom to fit speech allied ; 



FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE, D. D. 129 

While all along their downward trend 
Youth's earlier lights his steps attend ? 
Still in the gloaming of his day 
Lingers the glow that mocks decay. 

Friend, poet, scholar, teacher, sage ! 
Unshadowed by the mists of age, 
Long may the generous faith and thought, 
The lights from the ideal caught, 
That guided and inspired his youth, 
Shine clearer toward the perfect truth. 
And like some minster tower whose grand 
Melodious bells ring o'er the land, 
His voice be heard when daylight fails 
Across the darkened hills and vales ; 
And ere night's pall be o'er him cast, 
His mellowest music be his last. 



SO FAR, SO NEAR. 

Thou, so far, we grope to grasp thee — 

Thou, so near, we cannot clasp thee — 

Thou, so wise, our prayers grow heedless — 

Thou, so loving, they are needless ! 

In each human soul thou shinest. 

Human-best is thy divinest. 

In each deed of love thou warmest ; 

Evil into good transformest. 

Soul of all, and moving centre 

Of each moment's life we enter. 

Breath of breathing — light of gladness — 

Infinite antidote of sadness ; — 

All-preserving ether flowing 

Through the worlds, yet past our knowing. 

Never past our trust and loving, 

Nor from thine our life removing. 

Still creating, still inspiring, 

Never of thy creatures tiring. 

Artist of thy solar spaces, 

And thy humble human faces ; 

Mighty glooms and splendors voicing ; 



SO FAR, SO NEAR. 131 

In thy plastic work rejoicing ; 
Through benignant law connecting 
Best with best — and all perfecting, 
Though all human races claim thee, 
Thought and language fail to name thee, 
Mortal lips be dumb before thee, 
Silence only may adore thee ! 



• SONNETS. 

TO E. P. C. 
I. 
1. 

The Summer goes, with all its birds and flowers ; 

The Autumn passes with its solemn sky ; 

The Winter comes again — yet you and I 

Know not the old companionship once ours. 

The twilight mist between us hangs and lowers ; 

Your face I see not — voice I cannot hear. 

No letter tells me you in thought are near. 

The west-wind blows and sweeps away the showers, 

But from the west no whisper comes of you. 

Friends press around you in your distant home — 

(Your distant home I never yet have seen,) 

And old familiar greetings still renew ; 

While I with fancy's eyes alone can come 

And peep unnoted there behind your screen. 



SONNETS, 133 



IL 



2. 



Parted by time and space for many a year, 
Yet ever longing, hoping for a day 
When, heart to heart, the happy weeks shall stay 
Their flight for us, and all our sky be clear 
As in our boyhood's spring — my brother dear, 
You and I bide our time. The buds of May 
Shall blossom yet for us. What though the gray 
Of dusky Autumn eventide be near, 
And silver locks and beards have changed us so 
From what we were — you still to me are young, 
And I to you. The fireside of our loves 
Shall be our summer, bright as in the glow 
Of youth, when we, two blithe Arcadians, sung 
And fluted in those old Virginia groves. 



134 SONNETS. 



III. 



3. 

Ah, happy time ! when music bound in one 
Two kindred souls that ne'er were out of tune : 
When in the porch, beneath the summer moon, 
Our supper o'er, our school-boy lessons done, 
While other lads were at some boisterous fun, 
We trilled our Tara's Hall or Bonnie Doon : 
Or in some fire-lit wintry afternoon, 
Our flutes, you first, I second, bravely won 
Their winding path through many a tough duet ; 
Nor cared for plaudits louder than the praise 
Mother or sisters, in those simple days, 
Well pleased, bestowed : ah, sweeter than we met 
In after-life, from critics pledged to raise 
Art's standard high as dome or minaret. 



SONNETS. 135 



IV. 



4. 

Friend, dear as Memory's joys ! of life that 's past 

A part, and part of better life to come, 

If life to come there be, in some dear home 

Beyond the rigid clouds that overcast 

Our sundered lives — all that is mine thou hast ; — 

All thoughts, all sympathies ; — though far I roam 

From you — by mountains, streams, or ocean's foam 

Divided long — yet ever, first and last, 

Our love knows no division. In my soul 

And yours, we twin-born spirits of one blood, 

Still, as of old, are one. No sea can roll 

Between its league-long melancholy flood, 

No separate interests, loves, or pressing cares 

Disturb the mutual trust our being shares. 



136 SONNETS. 



V. 



5. 

All loves have frailer roots than loves that start 

From one ancestral blood. The friends we find 

In youth pass on before us, or behind 

Are dropped, or on diverging paths depart, 

While branches from one trunk still own one heart, 

And bud and bear from one maternal mind. 

Sister and brother need no vows to bind 

Their pre-ordained alliance, nor the art 

Of lovers plotting through a thousand fears 

Lest love, of passion born, should fade or change ; 

Nor dread the undermining drip of years ; 

Nor stand on forms that other souls estrange. 

Such love is ours, and theirs who bear our name, 

Born in the honored home from which we came. 



SONNETS. 137 



VI. 



6. 

Ah, many a time our memory slips aside 
And leaves the round of present cares and joys, 
To live again the time when we were boys ; 
To call our parents back with love and pride ; 
To see again the dear ones who have died ; 
To dream once more amid the household toys, 
The sports, the jests, the masquerades, the noise, 
The blaze and sparkle of the wood fireside ; 
The books, the drawings, and the merry press 
Around the blithe tea-board ; the evenings long ; 
Rattling backgammon and still, solemn chess ; 
And best of all when instrument and song 
Bore us to visionary lands and streams, 
And crowned our nights with coronals of dreams. 



138 SONNETS. 



vn. 



7. 



Those times are gone, that circle thinned away, 

And we who live, now scattered far and wide, 

Each in our separate centres fixed abide, 

Round which new interests now revolve and play 

In separate loves and duties day by day. 

Yet, by the records of old loves allied, 

We clasp each other's hands beneath the tide 

Of time, and cling together as we may. 

Even so beneath the sea the throbbing wires 

That bind the sundered continents in one, 

In space-annihilating pulses thrill 

With swift-winged words and purpose and desires. 

Our earlier visions haunt our memories still, 

And age grows young in friendship's quickening sun. 



SONNETS. 139 



VIII. 



8. 



You were not born to hide such gifts as yours 

'Neath dreary law-books, nor amid the dust 

And dry routine of desks to sit and rust 

Where clerks plod through their tasks on office-floors. 

Let duller laborers drudge through daily chores, 

And do what fate for them makes fit and just. 

You bravely do your work because you must ; 

And when released, your genius sings and soars. 

Such humor from your pen hath ever run 

In pictures or in letters all unforced, 

As Hogarth, Lamb, or Dickens might have done ; 

Finer than many a noted wit, who, horsed 

Upon the people's favor, waves his blade 

Like Harlequin, and makes his jests his trade. 



140 SONNETS. 



IX. 



9. 



I needs must praise the natural gifts of one 
Who praises not himself, nor seeks for praise ; 
Too unambitious for these emulous days, 
When each small talent seeks the public sun, 
And victors' wreaths are worn before they are won. 
So true to conscience that he oft betrays 
Himself, o'ervaluing standards others raise, 
Or underrating what himself has done. 
Who might have risen in letters or in art ; 
But faithful to the work he early chose, 
To that he gave his time, if not his heart. 
Whose genuine self begins when labors close — 
When with his friends, or books, or pen, apart, 
His cheerful sunset light far round him glows. 



SONNETS. 141 



X. 



10. 

Forgive — that thus the trumpet I have blown 
You never sounded — never cared to hear. 
The world, I know, can give no smile or tear 
To those whose story it has never known. 
But must the poet tune his lyre alone 
To themes of passionate hope or love or fear, — 
Or thoughts of loftier flight, yet shun the clear 
Affection of two brothers' hearts at one ? 
If gallant sonneteers may sing the light 
And radiant demoiselles of olden time — 
If in their melodies they may not slight 
The fleeting passion of their youthful prime, 
The old true loves from boyhood ever bright 
Are surely worth the tribute of a rhyme. 



142 SONNETS. 



SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD. 
XI. 

THE PRINTING-PRESS. 

In boyhood's days we read with keen delight 

How young Aladdin rubbed his lamp and raised 

The towering Djin whose form his soul amazed, 

Yet who was pledged to serve him day and night. 

But Gutenberg evoked a giant sprite 

Of vaster power, when Europe stood and gazed 

To see him rub his types with ink. Then blazed 

Across the lands a glorious shape of light, 

Who stripped the cowl from priests, the crown from 

kings, 
And hand in hand with Faith and Science wrought 
To free the struggling spirit's limed wings, 
And guard the ancestral throne of sovereign Thought. 
The world was dumb. Then first it found its tongue 
And spake — and heaven and earth in answer rung. 



SONNETS. H3 



XII. 

THE OCEAN STEAMER. 

With streaming pennons, scorning sail and oar, 
"With steady tramp and swift revolving wheel, 
And even pulse from throbbing heart of steel, 
She plies her arrowy course from shore to shore. 
In vain the siren calms her steps allure ; 
In vain the billows thunder on her keel ; 
Her giant form may toss and rock and reel 
And shiver in the wintry tempest's roar ; 
The calms and storms alike her pride can spurn. 
True to the day she keeps her appointed time. 
Long leagues of ocean vanish at her stern — 
She drinks the air, and tastes another clime, 
"Where men their former wonder fast unlearn, 
Which hailed her coming as a thing sublime. 



144 SONNETS, 



XIII. 

THE LOCOMOTIVE. 

Whirling along its living freight, it came, 
Hot, panting, fierce, yet docile to command — 
The roaring monster, blazing through the land 
Athwart the night, with- crest of smoke and flame ; 
Like those weird bulls Medea learned to tame 
By sorcery, yoked to plough the Colchian strand 
In forced obedience under Jason's hand. 
Yet modern skill outstripped this antique fame, 
When o'er our plains and through the rocky bar 
Of hills it pushed its ever-lengthening line 
Of iron roads, with gain far more divine 
Than when the daring Argonauts from far 
Came for the golden fleece, which like a star 
Hung clouded in the dragon-guarded shrine. 



SONNETS. 145 



XTV. 

THE TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE. 

Fleeter than time, across the Continent, 

Through unsunned ocean depths, from beach to beach, 

Around the rolling globe Thought's couriers reach. 

The new-tuned earth like some vast instrument 

Tingles from zone to zone ; for Art has lent 

New nerves, new pulse, new motion — all to each, 

And each to all, in swift electric speech 

Bound by a force unwearied and unspent. 

Now lone Katahdin talks with Caucasus ; 

The Arctic ice-fields with the sultry South, 

The sun-bathed palm thrills to the pine-tree's call. 

We for all realms were made, and they for us. 

For all there is a soul, an ear, a mouth ; 

And Time and Space are naught. The mind is all. 



146 SONNETS. 



XV. 

THE PHOTOGRAPH. 

Phcebus Apollo, from Olympus driven, 
Lived with Admetus, tending herds and flocks 
And strolling o'er the pastures and the rocks 
He found his life much duller than in Heaven. 
For he had left his bow, his songs, his lyre, 
His divinations and his healing skill, 
And as a serf obeyed his master's will. 
One day a new thought waked an old desire. 
He took to painting, with his colors seven, 
The sheep, the cows, the faces of the swains, 
All shapes and hues in forests and on plains. 
These old sun-pictures all are lost, or given 
Away among the gods. Man owns but half 
The Sun-god's secret — in the Photograph. 



SONNETS. 147 



XVI. 

THE SPECTROSCOPE. 

All honor to that keen Promethean soul 

Who caught the prismic hues of Jove and Mars, 

And from the glances of the daedal stars, 

And from the fiery sun, the secret stole 

That all are parts of one primeval Whole, — 

One substance beaming through Creation's bars 

Consent and peace, amid the chemic wars 

Of gases and of atoms. Yonder roll 

The planets ; yonder, baffling human thought, 

Suns, systems, all whose burning hearts are wooed 

To one confession — so hath Science caught 

Those eye-beams frank, whose speech cannot delude, 

How of one stuff our mortal earth is wrought 

With stars in their divine infinitude. 



148 SONNETS. 



XVII. 

THE MICROPHONE. 

The small enlarged, the distant nearer brought 

To sight, made marvels in a denser age. 

But Science turns with every year a page 

In the enchanted volume of her thought. 

The wizard's wand no longer now is sought. 

Yet with a cunning toy the Archimage 

May hear from Rome Vesuvius' thunders rage, 

And earthquake mutterings underground are caught, 

Alike with trivial sounds. Would there might rise 

Some spiritual seer, some prophet wise, 

Whose tactile vision would avert the woes 

Born of conflicting forces in the state ; — 

Some listener to the deep volcanic throes 

Below the surface — ere we cry, " Too late ! " 



SONNETS. 149 



XVIII. 

THE FIRESIDE. 

With what a live intelligence the flame 

Glows and leaps up in spires of flickering red, 

And turns the coal just now so dull and dead 

To a companion — not like those who came 

To weary me with iteration tame 

Of idle talk in shallow fancies bred. 

From dreary moods the cheerful fire has led 

My thoughts, which now their manlier strength reclaim. 

And like some frozen thing that feels the sun 

Through solitudes of winter penetrate, 

The frolic currents through my senses run ; 

While fluttering whispers soft and intimate 

Out of the ruddy firelight of the grate 

Make talk, love, music, poetry in one. 



150 SONNETS. 



XIX 

THE LADY'S SONNET. TWILIGHT. 

I know not why I chose to seem so cold 

At parting from you ; for since you are gone 

I see you still — I hear each word, each tone ; 

And what I hid from you I wish were told. 

I, who was proud and shy, seem now too bold 

To write these lines — and yet must write to own 

I would unsay my words, now I 'm alone. 

From my dark window out upon the wold 

I look. 'Twas through yon pathway to the west 

I watched you going, while the sunset light 

Went with you — and a shadow seemed to fall 

Upon my heart. And now I cannot rest 

Till I have written ; for I said, " To-night 

I '11 send your answer." Now I 've told you all. 



SONNETS. 151 



XX. 

THE LOVER'S SONNET. MIDNIGHT. 

I waited through the night, while summer blew 
The breath of roses through my darkened room. 
The whispering breeze just stirred the leafy gloom 
Beyond the window. On the lawn the dew 
Lay glistening in the starlight. No one knew 
I did not sleep, but waited here my doom 
Or victory. I saw the light-house loom 
Across the bay. The silence grew and grew, 
And hour by hour kept pace with my suspense. 
Each rustling noise, each passing footstep seemed 
The coming messenger I hoped yet feared. 
At last a knock — a throb — a pause intense — 
Your letter came. I read as if I dreamed. 
Almost too great to bear my bliss appeared ! 



152 SONNETS. 



XXI. 

THE PINES AND THE SEA. 

Beyond the low marsh-meadows and the beach, 

Seen through the hoary trunks of windy pines, 

The long blue level of the ocean shines. 

The distant surf, with hoarse, complaining speech, 

Out from its sandy barrier seems to reach ; 

And while the sun behind the woods declines, 

The moaning sea with sighing boughs combines, 

And waves and pines make answer, each to each. 

O melancholy soul, whom far and near, 

In life, faith, hope, the same sad undertone 

Pursues from thought to thought ! thou needs must hear 

An old refrain, too much, too long thine own : 

'T is thy mortality infects thine ear ; 

The mournful strain was in thyself alone. 



SONNETS. 153 



XXII. 

PENNYROYAL. 

Heavy with cares no winnowing hand could sift, 

Wrapt in a sadness never to be told, 

As o'er the fields and through the woods I strolled, 

Following with restless footstep but the drift 

Of the still August morn, so I might shift 

The scenery of my thoughts, and gild their old 

Monotonous fringes with a light less cold, 

I found the aromatic herb, whose swift 

And sweet associations bore me away 

To boyhood, when beneath an oak like this 

I culled the fragrant leaves. Crude childhood's bliss 

Was in the scent ; but brighter smiled the day 

For memories no cold shade could overcast — 

Safe 'mid the unblighted treasures of the past. 



154 SONNETS, 



XXIII. 

beethoven's fifth symphony. 

The mind's deep history here in tones is wrought, 
The faith, the struggles of the aspiring soul, 
The confidence of youth, the chill control 
Of manhood's doubts by- stern experience taught ; 
Alternate moods of bold and timorous thought, 
Sunshine and shadow — cloud and aureole ; 
The failing foothold as the shining goal 
Appears, and truth so long, so fondly sought 
Is blurred and dimmed. Again and yet again 
The exulting march resounds. We must win now ! 
Slowly the doubts dissolve in clearer air. 
Bolder and grander the triumphal strain 
Ascends. Heaven's light is glancing on the brow, 
And turns to boundless hope the old despair. 



SONNETS. 155 



XXIV. 

THE SECEDERS. 
1. 

Far from the pure Castalian fount our feet 
Have strayed away where daily we unlearn 
How Truth is one with Beauty. For we turn 
No more to hear the strains we sprang to greet 
When we were young, and love and life were sweet 
Before the world had taught us how to earn 
Its baser wealth, and from our doors to spurn 
The Muse like some poor vagabond and cheat. 
For we are young, and did not see the baits 
That in the distance lured us down the roads 
Where Toil and Care and Doubt, those lurking fates, 
Subdued our pliant backs to alien loads ; 
Till long since deadened to the Poet's tones, 
They fall on us as rain on logs and stones. 



156 SONNETS. 



XXV. 



2. 



Yet what were love, and what were toil and thought, 

And what were life, bereft of Poesy ? 

"Who lingers in a garden where the bee 

By no rich beds of fragrant flowers is caught — 

A homely vegetable patch where naught 

Is prized but for some table-caterer's fee, 

And Nature pledged to market-ministry ? 

To me another lore was early taught ; 

And rather would I lose the dear delights 

Of eye and ear, than wilfully forego 

The power that can transfigure sounds and sights, 

Can steep the world in symbols, and bestow 

The free admittance to all depths and heights, 

And make dull earth a heaven of thought below. 



SONNETS. 157 



XXVI. 

IN A LIBRARY. 
1. 

In my friend's library I sit alone, 

Hemmed in by books. The dead and living there, 

Shrined in a thousand volumes rich and rare, 

Tower in lono- rows, with names to me unknown. 

A dim half-curtained light o'er all is thrown. 

A shadowed Dante looks with stony stare 

Out from his dusky niche. The very air 

Seems hushed before some intellectual throne. 

What ranks of grand philosophers, what choice 

And gay romancers, what historians sage, 

What wits, what poets, on those crowded shelves ! 

All dumb forever, till the mind gives voice 

To each dead letter of each senseless page, 

And adds a soul they own not of themselves. 



158 SONNETS. 



XXVII. 

2. 

A miracle — that man should learn to fill 

These little vessels with his boundless soul ; 

Should through these arbitrary signs control 

The world, and scatter broadcast at his will 

His unseen thought, in endless transcript still 

Fast multiplied o'er lands from pole to pole 

By magic art ; and, as the ages roll, 

Still fresh as streamlets from the Muses' hill. 

Yet in these alcoves tranced, the lords of thought 

Stand bound as by enchantment — signs or words 

Have none to break the silence. None but they 

Their mute proud lips unlock, who here have brought 

The key. Them as their masters they obey. 

For them they talk and sing like uncaged birds. 



SONNETS. 159 



XXVIII. 

PAST SORROWS. 

As tangled driftwood barring up a stream 

Against our struggling oars when hope is high 

To reach some fair green island we descry 

Lying beyond us in the morning's gleam, 

And shimmering like a landscape in a dream — 

Yet waiting patiently the logs float by, 

And all our course lies open to the eye — 

So sorrows come and go. What though they seem 

A blight whose touch might turn a young head gray, 

Joy dawns again. Hope beckons us before. 

The tide that pressed against us breaks our bars ; 

The visionary islands smile once more. 

Life, with its rest by night, its work by day, 

Forgets the old griefs, and heals their deepest scars. 



160 SONNETS. 



XXIX. 

LIFE AND DEATH. 
1. 

O solemn portal, veiled in mist and cloud, 
Where all who have lived throng in, an endless line, 
Forbid to tell by backward look or sign 
What destiny awaits the advancing crowd ; 
Bourne crossed but once with no return allowed ; 
Dumb, spectral gate, terrestrial yet divine, 
Beyond whose arch all powers and fates combine, 
Pledged to divulge no secrets of the shroud. 
Close, close behind we step, and strive to catch 
Some whisper in the dark, some glimmering light ; 
Through circling whirls of thought intent to snatch 
A drifting hope — a faith that grows to sight ; 
And yet assured, whatever may befall, 
That must be somehow best that comes to all. 



SONNETS. 161 



XXX. 

2. 

Or endless sleep 't will be, — and that is rest, 

Freedom forever from life's weary cares — 

Or else a life beyond the climbing stairs 

And dizzy pinnacles of thought expressed 

In symbols such as in our mortal breast 

Are framed by time and space ; — life that upbears 

The soul by a law untried amid these snares 

Of sense that make it a too willing guest. 

So sleep or waking were a boon divine. 

Yet why this inextinguishable thirst, 

This hope, this faith that to existence cling ? 

Nay e'en the poor dark chrysalis some fine 

Ethereal creature prisons, till it burst 

Into the unknown air on golden wing. 



162 SONNETS. 



XXXI. 

3. 

If death be final, what is life, with all 

Its lavish promises, its thwarted aims, 

Its lost ideals, its dishonored claims, 

Its uncompleted growth ? . A prison wall, 

Whose heartless stones but echo back our call ; 

An epitaph recording but our names ; 

A puppet-stage where joys and griefs and shames 

Furnish a demon jester's carnival ; 

A plan without a purpose or a form ; 

A roofless temple ; an unfinished tale. 

And men like madrepores through calm and storm 

Toil, die to build a branch of fossil frail, 

And add from all their dreams, thoughts, acts, belief, 

A few more inches to a coral-reef. 



SONNETS. 163 



XXXII. 

4. 

If at one door stands life to cheat our trust, 

And at another, death, to mock because 

We thought life's promise good ; if all that was 

And is and should be ends in fume and dust — 

Then let us live for joy alone — the rust 

Of ease encase our minds — the grander laws 

Of souls be set aside. Let no man pause 

To weigh between his virtue and his lust. 

From first to last life baffles all our hopes 

Of aught but present bliss. Death waits to mock 

Our haste to indorse a visionary bond. 

Let pleasure dance us down earth's sunny slopes, 

And crown our heads with roses, ere the shock 

Of thunder falls. There is no life beyond ? 



164 SONNETS. 



XXXIII. 

5. 

Yet in all facts of sense life stands revealed ; 
And from a thousand symbols hope may take 
Its charter to escape the Stygian lake, 
And find existence in an ampler field. 
The streams by winter's icy breath congealed 
Flow when the voices of the spring awake. 
The electric current lives when tempests break 
The wires. The chemic energies unsealed 
By sudden change, in other forms survive. 
The senses cheat us where the mind corrects 
Their partial verdict. More than all, the heart 
The heart cold science counts not, is alive — 
Of the undivided soul that vital part 
Her microscopic eye in vain dissects. 



SONNETS. 165 



XXXIV. 

6. 

So, heralded by Reason, Faith may tread 

The darkened vale, the dolorous paths of night, 

In the great thought secure that life and light 

Flow from the Soul of all, who, with the dead 

As with the living, is the fountain-head. 

And though our loved and lost are snatched from sight, 

Some unseen power will guide them in their flight, 

And to some unknown home their steps are led. 

Yet has no seer, by sacred visions fired, 

Disclosed their state to those they leave behind ; 

No holy prophet, saint or sage inspired — ■ 

Save in the magic lantern of the mind — 

Seen in ecstatic trance those realms desired : 

And all the oracles are dumb and blind. 



166 SONNETS. 



XXXV. 

7. 

The wish behind the thought is the soul's star 

Of faith, and out of earth we build our heaven. 

Life to each unschooled child of time has given 

A fairy wand with which he thinks to unbar 

The dark gate to a region vast and far, 

Where all is gained at length for which he has striven- 

All loss requited — all offences shriven — 

All toil o'erpassed — effaced each battle-scar. 

But ah ! what heaven of rest could countervail 

The ever widening thought — the endless stress 

Of action whereinto the heart is born ? 

What sphere so blessed it could overbless 

With sweets the soul, when all such gifts must fail, 

If from its chosen work that soul were torn ? 



SONNETS. 167 



XXXVI. 

8. 

Not for a rapture unalloyed I ask. 

Not for a recompense for all I miss. 

A banquet of the gods in heavenly bliss, 

A realm in whose warm sunshine I may bask, 

Life without discipline or earnest task 

Could ill repay the unfinished work of this. 

Nay - — e'en to clasp some long-lost Beatrice 

In bowers of paradise — the mortal mask 

Dropped from her face now glorified and bright. 

But I would fain take up what here I left 

All crude and incomplete ; would toil and strive 

To regain the power of which I am bereft 

By slow decay and death, with fuller light 

To aid the larger life that may survive. 



168 SONNETS 



XXXVII. 

TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTTER. 

Unbidden to the feast where friends have brought, 
To greet thy seventy years, their wreaths of rhyme, 
For that thy form erect such weight of time 
Should bear, was never present to my thought, — 
Whittier, I bring my offering, though unsought. 
Thou, first of all our bards, hast rung the chime 
Of souls, whose zeal denounced a nation's crime. 
Thy fire, intense yet soft, from heaven was caught. 
Thou too the dear neglected chords hast wooed 
Of plain New England life, and earned a fame 
From whose wide light thy modest nature shrinks. 
Long shall the land revere and love thy name ; 
Long find among thy songs the golden links 
That bind the world in peace and brotherhood. 

December 5, 1877. 



SONNETS. 169 



XXXVIII. 

TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. MT. 70. 

A fountain in our green New England hills 
Sent forth a brook, whose music, as I stood 
To listen, laughed and sang through field and wood 
With mingled melodies of joyous rills. 
Now, following where they led, a river fills 
Its channel with a wide calm shining flood 
Still murmuring on its banks with changeful mood. 
So, Poet, sound thy " stops of various quills," 
Where waves of song, wit, wisdom charm our ears 
As in thy youth, and thoughts and smiles by turns 
Are ours, grave, gay, or tender. Time forgets 
To freeze thy deepening stream. The stealthy years 
But bribe the Muse to bring thee amulets 
That guard the soul whose fire of youth still burns. 
November, 1879. 



170 SONNETS. 



XXXIX. 

BAYARD TAYLOE. 

Can one so strong in hope, so rich in bloom 
That promised fruit of nobler worth than all 
He yet had given, drop thus with sudden fall ? 
The busy brain no more its work resume ? 
Can death for lif e so versatile find room ? 
Still must we fancy thou canst hear our call 
Across the sea — with no dividing wall 
More dense than space to interpose its doom. 
Ah then — farewell, young-hearted genial friend ! 
Farewell, true poet, who didst grow and build 
From thought to thought still upward and still new. 
Farewell, unsullied toiler in a guild 
Where some defile their hands, and where so few 
With aims as pure strive faithful to the end. 

1879. 



SONNETS. 171 



XL. 

JOHN WEISS. 

The summer comes again, yet nothing brings 
Of him but memories of that clear-lit eye, 
That voice, that presence that can never die. 
Fame o'er his dust no public trumpet rings. 
No bard beside his grave his genius sings. 
Yet he was one of that brave company, 
The apostles of the race — the champion high 
Of faith by reason guarded from the slings 
Of dull sectarians and of atheist foes. 
In him the scholar, teacher, prophet, wit 
And genial friend were blended in one strain. 
From his electric intellect arose 
Auroral lights in which the past was lit, 
And iEschylus and Shakspeare lived again. 



172 SONNETS. 



XLI. 

GEORGE RIPLEY. 

Warm, generous and young in heart and brain, 

A wise, ripe scholar of the antique mould, 

Had he but chosen he might have enrolled 

His name among philosophers who gain 

Renown, and lead an academic train. 

But unambitious in a humbler fold — 

Humbler yet wider — he the current told 

Of others' thoughts and works in graceful strain. 

So from his watch-tower calm the public mind 

He charmed and wisely led. Still young in age, 

And still in fireside talk the cordial friend, 

He read between the lines upon life's page 

The deeper meaning those alone can find 

Whose souls toward truth and not its semblance, tend. 



SONNETS. 173 



XLII. 

TO G. W. C. 
AUGUST 1, 1846. 

The day so long remembered comes again. 
The years have vanished. On the vessel's deck 
We stand and wave adieux, until a speck 
Our bark appears to friends whose eyes would fain 
Follow our voyage o'er the unknown main. 
Shadows of sails and masts and rigging fleck 
The sunlit ship. The captain's call and beck 
Hurry the cheery sailors as they strain 
The windy sheets ; while we in careless mood 
Gaze on the silver clouds and azure sea, 
Filled with old ocean's novel solitude, 
And dream of that new life of Italy, 
The golden fleece for which we sailed away, 
Whose splendor freshens this memorial day. 
August!, 1881. 



174 SONNETS. 



XLIII. 

LONDON. 

Black in the midnight lies the City vast. 

Its dim horizon from my window high 

I see shut in beneath a misty sky 

Red with the light a million lamp-fires cast 

Up from the humming streets. And now at last 

With lessening roar the weary wheels go by. 

At last in sleep all discords swoon and die. 

Now wakes the solemn visionary Past, 

Peopled with spirits of the mighty dead 

Whose names are London's glory and her shame ■ 

Seers, poets, heroes, martyrs — deathless lives 

Long blazoned in the chronicles of fame. 

The inglorious Present veils its dwarfish head. 

England's ideal life alone survives ! 



SONNETS. 175 



XLIV. 

VEILED MEMORIES. 

Of love that was, of friendship in the days 

Of youth long gone, yet oft remembered still, 

And seen like distant landscapes from a hill, 

Clothed in a garment of aerial haze, . 

What need to sing ? Yet real is each phase 

Of life ; and Time, that brings all good and ill 

Of this our mortal lot, can never spill 

One drop of that full cup he fills and weighs. 

Ah, faces veiled that start from out the past ! 

Ah, spectral images once swift and warm ! 

Ye are but hidden by perspectives vast. 

To-day o'ermasters all. And yet each form 

Of life and thought, forgotten or aloof, 

Is woven through the soul's strange warp and woof. 



176 SONNETS. 



XLV. 

TENNYSON. 
1. 

His brows were circled by a wreath of bays, 
The symbol of the bard's well-earned renown — 
Upon his head more regal than the crown 
Of kings. For he by his immortal lays 
Is King among the poets of these days. 
And far and wide where'er our mother-tongue 
Is known, his winged lines are read and sung 
In crowded cities and in green by-ways. 
What could his country give that he had not ? 
Fame, wealth, loye's best companionship he had. 
And, blown across the seas, no lonely spot 
Of our far West but felt the effluence glad 
Borne to our hearts as from ethereal fire 
In the rich music of his English lyre. 



SONNETS. 177 



XLVI. 



2. 



How grand he would have stood, had he declined 
The needless coronet he donned, as though 
Its gilt could heighten his proud aureole's glow. 
But downward he has stepped, a seat to find — 
Not with the lords of that imperial kind 
Whose simple manhood, fed by love and truth, 
Found far from monarchs' courts perennial youth 
In the ideal gardens of the mind ; — 
But in a throng of blank nobilities 
In outward fellowship of lip and eye — 
Of empty forms and hollow courtesies ; 
Thou art become as one of us — they cry. 
Another shape than thine must now be worn. 
Son of the morning — how thy beams are shorn ! 



178 SONNETS. 



XLVII. 

TO G. W. C. 

Still shines our August day, as calm, as bright 
As when, long years ago, we sailed away 
Down the blue Narrows and the widening bay 
Into the wrinkling ocean's flashing light ; 
And the whole universe of sound and sight 
Repeats the radiance of that festal day. 
But for the inward eye no power can stay 
The fleeting splendor of our youth's delight. 
Still shines our August day, — but not for me 
The old enchantment, — when, by care and sorrow 
Untried, the hopeful heart was ever free 
To greet the morn as herald of like morrow. 
Yet shine, fair day ! And let my soul from thee 
Hope, faith, and strength for life's dim future borrow. 
August 1, 1884. 



SONNETS. 179 



XLVIII. 

GLADSTONE. 

For Peace, and all that follows in her path — 
Nor slighting honor and his country's* fame, 
He stood unmoved, and dared to face the blame 
Of party-spirit and its turbid wrath. 
He saw in vision the dread aftermath, 
Should war once kindle its world-circling flame 
Through Asian tribes that bear the British name. 
Time few such crises for a people hath, 
And few such leaders. Calmly he pursued 
A course at which the feebler spirits sneered, 
The bolder fumed with clamor loud and rude. 
And while the world still doubted, hoped, and feared, 
This chief a bloodless victory hath won — 
Britannia's wisest, best, and bravest son. 
June, 1885. 



180 SONNETS. 



XLIX. 

J. R. L. 

(on his homeward voyage.) 

1. 

Back from old England, in whose courts he stood 
Foremost to knit by act and word the band 
Between the daughter and the mother-land 
In all by either prized of truth and good, 
We welcome to a fellowship renewed 
His country's friend and ours. The master-hand 
That held the pen and lyre could still command 
Affairs of state, controlling league and feud. 
So, helped, not hindered, may his later strains 
Flow deeppr, richer, though by sorrow toned ; 
And life by losses grow as once by gains ; 
And age hold fast the best that youth has owned. 
But ah, hurt not with touch too heavy, Time, 
The light-winged wisdom of his gayer rhyme. 



SONNETS. 181 



L. 



2. 

O SHIP that bears him to his native shore, 
Beneath whose keel the seething ocean heaves, 
Bring safe our poet with his garnered sheaves 
Of Life's ripe autumn poesy and lore I 
Though round the old homestead where we met of yore 
In the unsaddened days the southwind grieves 
Through his green elms, and all their summer leaves 
Seem whispering of the scenes that come no more, 
Yet may the years that brought him honors due 
Where Europe's best and wisest learned his worth, 
Yield hope and strength to reach horizons new 
In the broad Western land that gave him birth ; 
Nor bar his vision to a sunlit view 
Beyond the enshrouding mysteries of earth. 
June 13, 1885. 



182 SONNETS. 



LI. 

THE HUMAN FLOWER. 
1. 

In the old void of unrecorded time, 

In long, slow aeons of the voiceless past, 

A seed from out the weltering fire-mist cast 

Took root — a struggling plant that from its prime 

Through rudiments uncouth, through rock and slime, 

Grew, changing form and issue — and clinging fast, 

Stretched its aspiring tendrils — till at last 

Shaped like a spirit it began to climb 

Beyond its rugged stem with leaf and bud 

Still burgeoning to greet the sunlit air 

That clothed its regal top with love and power, 

And compassed it as with a heavenly flood — 

Until it burst in bloom beyond compare, 

The world's consummate, peerless human flower. 



SONNETS. 183 



LIL 



2. 

Shall that bright flower the countless ages toiled 
And travailed to bring forth — shall that rare rose, 
Whose bloom and fragrance earth and heaven unclose 
Their treasuries to enrich, by death be foiled ? 
Its matchless splendor trampled down and spoiled ? 
Shall that Celestial Love — who watched its throes 
Through centuries of long struggles and of woes, 
And freed it from the old Serpent round it coiled ; 
Who tended it, and reared its glorious head 
Above the brambles and the poisonous marsh, 
And shielded it when zones were cased in ice — 
Leave it to perish when the summons harsh 
Of death is rung, — or, ere its leaves are shed, 
Transplant it to his realm of Paradise ? 



184 SONNETS. 



LIIL 

AUGUST. 

Far off among the fields and meadow rills 
The August noon bends o'er a world of green. 
In the blue sky the white clouds pause, and lean 
To paint broad shadows on the wooded hills 
And upland farms. A brooding silenee fills 
The languid hours. ,No living forms are seen 
Save birds and insects. Here and there, between 
The broad boughs and the grass, the locust trills 
Unseen his long-drawn, slumberous monotone. 
The sparrow and the lonely phcebe-bird, 
Now near, now far, across the fields are heard ; 
And close beside me here that Spanish drone, 
The dancing grasshopper, whom no trouble frets, 
In the hot sunshine snaps his castanets. 



SONNETS. 185 



LIV. 

IDLE HOURS. 

Ye idle hours of summer, not in vain, 
To one by Nature's beauty fed, ye pass — 
Though sending through the mental camera glass 
No philosophic lesson to the brain, 
But only pictures fair of shaded lane, 
Of dappled cows knee-deep in meadow grass ; 
Bright hill-tops with their sloping forest mass, 
Or barn-roofs glimmering gray across the plain. 
Earth, air, and water, and the sacred skies 
Have something still to tell, not less, I ween, 
Than famous books the learned sages prize, 
Weighted with thought abstract and logic keen, 
Where Concord pores with metaphysic eyes 
O'er vasty deeps of the unknown and unseen. 



186 SONNETS. 



LV. 

MUSIC AND POETKY. 
1. 

Sing, poets, as ye list, of fields, of flowers, 

Of changing seasons with their brilliant round 

Of keen delights, or themes still more profound — 

Where soul through sense transmutes this world of ours. 

There is a life intense beyond your powers 

Of utterance, which the ear alone has found 

In the aerial fields of rhythmic sound — 

The inviolate pathways and air-woven bowers 

Built by entwining melodies and chords. 

Ah, could I find some correspondent sign 

Matching such wondrous art with fitting words ! 

But vain the task. Within his hallowed shrine 

Apollo veils his face. No muse records 

In human speech such mysteries divine. 



SONNETS. 187 



LVI. 

2. 

Yet words though weak are all that poets own 

Wherewith their muse translates that kindred muse 

Of Harmony, whose subtle forms and hues 

Float in the unlanguaged poesy of Tone. 

And so no true-souled artist stands .alone ; 

But all are brothers, though one hand may use 

A magic wand the others must refuse, 

And painters need no sculptor's Parian stone. 

If Art is long, yet is her province wide. 

While all for truth and beauty live and dare, 

One sacred temple covers all her sons. 

Music and Poesy stand side by side. 

Through every member one blood-current runs : 

One aim, one work, one destiny they share. 



188 SONNETS. 



LVII. 

TO SLEEP. 

Come, Sleep — Oblivion's sire ! Come, blessed Sleep ! 

Thy shadowy sheltering wings above me spread. 

Fold to thy balmy breast my weary head. 

Shut close behind the gates of sense, and steep 

All sad remembrance in thy Lethe deep. 

But come not as thou comest to the bed 

Of the tired laborer sleeping like the dead 

In dull and dreamless trance. But let me keep 

The visionary paths of fantasy 

Down through the mystic mazes of a land 

Transfigured by thy wonder-working spell. 

So lead me, gentle Sleep, with guiding hand, 

That when I wake from dreams, I still may be 

Wooed back to tread thy fields of asphodel. 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 1 

A CANTATA. 

Oh, that I could sinne once see ! 

We paint the devil foul, yet he 

Hath some good in him, all agTee. 
Sinne is flat opposite to the Almighty, seeing" 
It wants the good of virtue, and of being. 

But God more care of us hath had. 

If apparitions make us sad, 

By sight of sinne we should grow mad. 

Yet as in sleep we see foul death and live, 

So devils are our sinnes in prospective. 

George Herbert. 



1 1 have here revised and enlarged a poem published some years ago entitled 
*' Satan." The reader of the original text will find many important changes 
and additions in this its present shape — filling out and completing its 
rather sketch-like form. The new title too, I hope, is more appropriate to 
the subject than the old one. 



190 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 



THE OVERTURE. 

Had I, instead of unsonorous words, 

The skill that moves in rapturous melodies, 
And modulations of entrancing chords 

Through mystic mazes of all harmonies — 
The bounding pulses of an overture 
Whose grand orchestral movement might allure 
The listener's soul through chaos and through night, 
And seeming dissonance to concord and to light — 
I might allow some harsh Titanic strains 

To wrestle with Apollo and with Jove ; 
And let the war-cries on barbaric plains 

Clash through the chords of wisdom and of love. 
For still the harmonies should sing and soar 
Above the discord and the battle's roar ; 
E'en as the evolving art and course of time, 

Amid the wrecks in wild confusion hurled, 
Move with impartial rhythm and cosmic rhyme 

Along the eternal order of the world. 

Then would I bid my lyric band express 
In music the old earth's long toil and stress : 
How the dumb iron centuries have foretold 
The coming of the future age of gold : 
How, ere the morning stars together sang, 
Divine completeness out of chaos sprang 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 191 

Through shapeless germs of lower forms that climb 
By slow vast seons of a dateless time : 
Till, through the impulse of the primal plan 
They reach their flowering in the soul of man.. 

All swift-contending fugues — all wild escapes 

Of passion — long-drawn wail and sudden blast — 

Weird, winding serpent-chords, their writhing shapes 
Shot through with arrowy melodies that fast 

Pursue them, or that fall and lose themselves 

In changing forms, as in some land of elves ; 
The shadows and the lights 

Of joyous mornings, and of sorrowing. nights — 

Strange tones of crude half-truth — the good within 

The mysteries of evil and of sin, 

Should weave the prelude of a symphony 

Whose music voiced the world's vast harmony ; 
And only to the ears 

Of spirits listening from serener spheres 

Of thought, the differing tones should blend and twine 

Into the semblance of a work divine ; 

Where, not in strife but peace, should meet 

What single were but incomplete. 

I would unloose the soul beneath the wings 

Of every instrument ; 
I would enlist the deep-complaining strings 

Of doubt and discontent ; 



192 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

The low sad mutterings and entangled tunes 

Of viols and bassoons ; — . 

Shy horns with diffident tones — ■ 

The insolent trombones — 

The reedy notes 

From mellow throats 
Of oboe and of clarionet — 
Their pure and pastoral singing met 
By clash of bacchanal cymbals, and a rout 
Of tipsy satyrs dancing all about : — 
Carols of love and hope checked by the blare 
Of trumpet-cries of anger and despair : — 
All differing mingling voices of the deep — 
All startling blasts, all airs that lull to sleep ; 
The mountain cataract that whirls and spins 

And bursts in spray asunder : — 
Swift pattering rains of flutes and violins, — 

The tymbal's muffled thunder : 
JEolian breathings wild and soft, 
Notes that sink or soar aloft — 
Soar or sink with harp-strings pulsing under : — 
Ravishing melodies that stream 
Through chords entrancing as a dream 

Out of a realm of wonder. 

Or else, from off the full and large-leaved score 

Into the willing instruments I 'd pour 

A noise of battle in the air unseen ; 

Of ghostly squadrons sending tremors strange 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 193 

Of trouble and disastrous change 
From beyond their cloudy screen ; 
Low rumbling thunders — drops of bloody rain — 
Earthquake and storm — presentiment of pain — 

Strange sobbings in the air 
Hushed by degrees in fading semitones 

And softened sighs and moans, 
As when a mother by the cradle stills 
At night her weeping child, ere morn peeps o'er the hills, 
And all the world again is bright and fair. 

While, with receding feet, 

Far off is heard the beat 
Of mournful marches of the muffled drums ; 

And nearer now and nearer, 

Sweeter still and clearer, 
The bird-like flute-notes leap into the air, 
While the great human-heavenly music comes 
Emerging from the dark with bursts of song 
And hope and victory delayed too long. 

So should my music fill its perfect round 
With dewy sunrise, and with peace profound. 

Ah, what are all the discords of all time 
But stumbling steps of one persistent life 

That struggles up through mists to heights sublime, 
Foref elt through all creation's lingering strife : — 

The deathless motion of one undertone, 

Whose deep vibrations thrill from God to God alone ! 



194 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

PART I. 

Daybreak. 

Chorus of Planetary Spirits. 
Ye interstellar spaces, serene and still and clear, 

Above, below, around 1 
Ye gray unmeasured breadths of ether, — sphere on 
sphere ! 
We listen, but no sound 
Rings from your depths profound. 

But ever along and all across the morning bars 

Fast-flashing meteors run — 
The trailing wrecks of fierce and fiery-bearded stars, 

Scattered and lost and won 

Back to their parent sun. 

Through rifts of bronzing clouds the tides of morning 
glow 

And swell and mount apace. 
We watch and wait if haply we at last may know 

Some record we may trace 

Upon the orbs of space. 

Above, below, around we track our planets' flight ; 

Their paths and destinies 
Are intertwined with ours. Remote or near, their light 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 195 

Or darkness to our eyes 
A mystic picture lies. 

First Spirit. 

Close to the morn a small and sparkling star-world dances, 

Bathed in the flaming mist ; 
Flashing and quivering like a million moving lances 

Of gold and amethyst 

By slanting sunrise kissed. 

A fairy realm of rapid and unimpeded sprites, 

That fly and leap and dart ; 
All fierce and tropic fervors, all swift and warm delights 

Bound and flash and start 

In every fiery heart. 

Second Spirit. 

Deep in the dawn floats up a star of dewy fire — 

So pure it seems new-born ; 

As though the soul of morn 
Were pulsing through its heart in dim, divine desire 
Of poesy and love ; — the star of morn and eve — 

Whose crystal sphere is shining 

With joys beyond divining — 
Passion that never tortures, and hopes that ne'er deceive. 

Third Spirit. 

There swims the pale, green Earth, half drowned and 
thunder-rifted, 



196 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Steeped in a sea of rain. Above the watery waste 
Of God's primeval flood, all other land effaced — 

One peak alone uplifted. 
The baffled lightnings play around its crags and chasms ; 
So far away they flash, I hear no thunder-spasms. 
But now the scowling clouds are drifting from its spaces, 
And leave it to the wind and coming day's embraces. 

Fourth Spirit. 

Beyond, a planet rolls with darkly lurid sides, 

Flooded and seamed and stained by drenching Stygian 

tides ; 
Deep gorges, up whose black and slimy slopes there peep 
All monstrous Saurian growths that run or fly or creep ; 
And, in and out the holes and caverns clogged with mud, 
Crawl through their giant ferns to suck each other's blood. 
I see them battling there in fog and oozy water, 
Symbols of savage lust, deformity, and slaughter. 

Fifth Spirit 

I see an orb above that spins with rapid motion, 

Vaster and vaster growing — 
Belted with sulphurous clouds ; and through the rents an 

ocean 
Boiling and plunging up on a crust of fiery shore. 
And now I hear far off the elemental roar, 

And the red fire-winds blowing : 
A low, dull, steady moan a million miles away, 



ORMUZD AND AHR1MAN. 197 

Of whirling hurricanes that rage all night, all day. 
No life of man or beast, were life engendered there, 
Could bide those flaming winds, that white metallic glare. 

Sixth Spikit. 

But yonder, studded round with lamps of moonlight 
tender, 

And arched from pole to pole with rings of rainbow 

splendor, 
A world rolls far apart ; as though in haughty scorning 
Of all the alien light of his diminished morning. 

Seventh and Eighth Spirits. 

Cold, cold and dark — and farther still 

We dimly see the icy spheres 
Like spectre worlds, who yet fulfil, 
Through slow dull centuries of years, 
Their circuit round the distant sun who winds them at 
his will. 

Chokus. 

Round and round one central orb 

The wheeling planets move, 
And some reflect and some absorb 

The floods of light and love. 

The rolling globe of molten stones, 
The spinning watery waste, 



198 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

The forests whirled through tropic zones 
By circling moons embraced — 

We watch their elemental strife ; 

We wait, that we may see 
Some record of their inner life, 

Where all is mystery. 

A pause. The Spirits approach the Earth. The Sun rises over 
the Continent of Asia. 

Second Spirit. 

Look, brothers, look ! The quivering sunrise tinges 

Our nearest orb of Earth. The forest fringes 

Redden with joy ; and all about the sun, 

That gilds the boundless east, the cloud-banks dun 

Flame into gold ; and with a crimson kiss 

Wake the green world to beauty and to bliss. 

See how she glows with sweet responsive smile ! 

Hark, how the waves of air lap round her ! 
As though she were some green, embowered isle, 

And the fond ocean had just found her, 
In Time's primeval morn of unrecorded calms 
Hidden away with all her lilies and her palms ; 
And flattering at her feet, had smoothed his angry 

mane, 
And moving round her kissed her o'er and o'er again. 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 199 

Third Spirit. 
And now, behold, our wings are rapid as our thought ; 

And nearer yet have brought 
Our feet, until we hover above the Asian lands 

Beyond the desert sands. 
There, girt about by mountain peaks that cleave the skies, 

A blooming valley lies : 
A pathway, sloping down from visionary heights 

Through shades and dappled lights, 
Lost in a garden wilderness of tropic trees 

And flowers and birds and bees. 
Far off I smell the rose, the amaranth, the spice, 

The breath of Paradise. 
Far off I hear the singing through hidden groves and 
vales 

Of Eden's nightingales ; 
And, sliding down through pines and moss and rocky 
walls, 

The murmuring waterfalls. 
And lo, two radiant forms that seem akin to us, 

Walk, calm and beauteous, 
Crowned with the light of thought and mutual love, 
whose blisses 

Are sealed with rapturous kisses. 
Ah, beautiful green Earth ! ah, happy, happy pair ! 

Can there be aught so fair, 

brothers, in yon vast unpeopled worlds afar, 

As these bright beings are ! 



200 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Chorus of Spirits. 
The stars in the heavens are singing 

Response to the wonderful story ; 
Joy, joy to the race that is springing 

To cover the earth with its glory ! 

The race that enfolds in its bosom 
A birthright divine and immortal ; 

As the fruit is enwrapped in the blossom, 
As the garden is hid by the portal ! 

Distant Voices. 
{A change to a minor key.) 
Sin and weakness, misery and pain, 

Cloud their sunlit birth ; 
And the sons of Heaven alone remain 
Gods unmixed with earth. 

Light and darkness are the twins of fate ; 

Undivided they, 
Through all realms that bear a mortal date, 

Hold alternate sway. 

Through the universe the lords of life 

Never at peace can be. 
Good and evil in a ceaseless strife 

Fight for victory. 



ORMUZD AND AERIMAN. 201 

Third Spirit. 
I hear in the spaces below 
A discord of voices that flow- 
In muttering tones through the air. 
But where are they hidden — where ? 
There are trailings of gloom through the spaces, 

And far-darting cones that eclipse 
The splendor of planets whose faces 
Are dimmed by their darkening traces, 

And frozen by alien lips ; 
And the dream of a swift-coming change 
Foretokens a destiny strange. 

And what is yon Shadow that creeps 
On the marge of her crystalline deeps ? 
On the field and the river and grove, 

On the borders of hope and of rest ; 
On the Eden of wedlock and love ; 

On the labor contentment hath blessed ? 
That crawls like a serpent of mist 

Through the vales and the gardens of peace, 
With a blight upon all it hath kissed, 

And a shade that shall never decrease? 
That maddens the wings of desire, 

And saddens the ardors of joy — 
Winged like a phantom of fire — 

Armed like a fiend to destroy ! 



202 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Second Spirit. 
Before me there flitted a vision — 

A vision of dawn and Creation, 
Of faith and of doubt and division, 

Of mystical fruit and temptation : 
A garden of lilies and roses, 

Ah, sweeter than dreams ever fashioned ; 
Hopes in whose splendor reposes 

A love that was pure and impassioned. 
But alas for the sons and the daughters 

Of man, in the morning of nations ! 
Alas for their rivers of waters ! 

Alas for their fruitless oblations ! 
The curse and the blight and the sentence 
Have fallen too swift for repentance. 
I see it, I feel it — O brother ! 

It shadows one half of their garden. 
O Earth ! O improvident Mother ! 

Where left'st thou thy angel, thy warden ? 
Is it theirs, or the guilt of another ? 

Must they die without hope of a pardon ? 
What is it they suffer, O brother, 

In the red, rosy light of their garden ? 

The Spirits. 
Ye Angels — ye heavenly Powers 
Whose wisdom is higher than ours — 
From the blight, from the terror defend them 
Help, help ! In their Eden befriend them. 



ORMUZD AND AERIMAN. 203 

The Angel Raphael. 
Beyond the imagined limits of such space 
As ye can guess, I passed, yet heard your cry. 
For ye are brother spirits. And I come, 
Swifter than light, to shield you from the dread 
Of earth-born shadows, and the ghostly folds 
Of seeming evil curtaining round your worlds. 
•Yet can I bring no amulet to guard 
One peaceful breast from sorrow ; for yourselves 
Are girt about, as I, by that divine, 
Exhaustless Love, whose pledge your souls contain. 

The Spirits. 

Ah, not for ourselves — but our brothers 
We plead, in their dawn overglooming, 

For the death is not theirs, but anothers. 
Help, help ! from the doom that is coming ; 

For they stand all alone and unguided ; 

No Past with its lesson upholds them ; 
Their life from their race is divided ; 

A childhood unconscious enfolds them. 

Is it sin — is it death that has shrouded 
Their souls, or a taint in their nature ? 

Is there hope for a future unclouded ? 
Tell — tell us — angelical teacher ! 



204 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Raphael. 
Yon earth, which claimed your closer vigilance, 
And seems so near to you in time and space, 
Is far away. Your present is its past. 
To spirits, worlds and aeons are condensed 
Into a moment's feeling or a thought. 
While ye were singing as ye watched those orbs, 
They grew and grew from incandescent globes 
Girdled with thunder, wreathed with sulphurous steam 
Or from the slime where rude gigantic forms 
Of crocodile or bat plunged through the dense 
And flowerless wilds of cane, or flapped like dreams 
Of darkness through the foul mephitic air. 
These shapes gave way to forests, rocks, and seas, 
And shapely forms of beast and bird and man — 
The last result of wonder-working Time — 
Man — the tall crowning flower and fruit of all — 
And the vast complex tissues he hath wrought 
Of life and laws and government and arts. 
All this ye knew not ; tranced in choral song, 
Your music was the oblivion of all time. 

The Spirits. 
Have we not seen the approaching doom of Earth? 

Raphael. 

The vision ye have had of joy and doom 
Flashing and glooming o'er two little lives, 



GRMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 205 

Is truth half-typed in legend, such as fed 

The people of the ancient days, distilled 

From crude primordial growths of time, when sin 

Saw the fierce flaming sword of conscience shake 

Its terror through the groves of Paradise, 

Grasped by Jehovah's red right hand in wrath. 

The Spirits. 
Was it a dream ? We saw that red right hand, 

Raphael. 

The events and thoughts that passed in olden time 
Dawn on your senses with the beams of light 
That left long, long ago those distant worlds, 
And flash from out the past like present truths. 
It was a poet's dream ye saw. It held 
A truth. 'Tis yours to unfold the mythic form, 
And guess the meaning of the ancient tale. 

The Spirits. 

We mark thy words ; we know that thou art wise 

And good ; and yet we hover in a mist 

Of doubt. Help us ! Our sight is weak and dim. 

Raphael. 

Know then that men and Angels can conceive 
Through symbols only, the eternal truths. 
Through all creation streams this dual ray — 



206 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

The marriage of the spirit with the form — 

The correspondence of the universe 

With souls through sense ; and that the deepest thought 

And firmest faith are nurtured and sustained 

By the great visible universe of time 

And space — the alphabet whose mystic forms 

Present all inner lessons to the soul — 

And thus the unseen by the seen is known. 

Yea, even the blank and sterile voids that span 

The dead unpalpitating space 'twixt star 

And star, shall speak, as light hath spoken once. 

And hark ! Even now the unfathomable deeps 
Begin to stir. I hear a far off sound 
Of shuddering wings, beyond the hurrying clouds, 
Beyond the stars — now nearer, nearer still ! 

Distant Voices. 
{Confusedly, in a minor key.) 
Behind us shines the Light of lights. 
We are the Shadows, we the nights, 
That blot the pure expanse of time. 
And yet we weave the destined rhyme 
Of creatures with the Increate — 
Of God and man, free will and fate ; 
The warp and woof of heavens and hells ; 

The noiseless round of death and birth ; 
The eternal protoplasmic spells 

Binding the sons of God to earth ; — 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 207 

The ceaseless web of mystery 
That has been, and shall ever be. 

The Spirits. 

Far off we seem to hear a chorus strange, 
Rising and falling through the gathering gloom. 
And now the congregated clouds appear 
To take the semblance of a Shape, that bends 
This way — as when a whirling ocean-spout 
Drinks, as it moves along, the light of heaven. 

Raphael. 

Spirit — if Spirit or Presence 

Thou art, or the gloom of a symbol — 
Approach, if thou canst, to interpret 

Thy name and thy work and thy essence. 

(A pause.) 

Behold, the Shadow spreads and towers apace, 
Like a dense cloud that rolls along the sea 
Landward, then shrouds the winding shore, the fields, 
The network of the gray autumnal woods, 
And the low cottage roofs of upland farms ; 
What seemed a vapor with a ragged fringe 
Changes to wings, that sweep from north to south. 
And round about the mass whose cloudy dome 
Should be a head, I see the lambent flames 
Of distant lightnings play. And now a voice 



208 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Of winds and waves and crumbling thunder tones 
Commingled, muttering unintelligible things, 
Approaches us. The air grows strangely chill 
And nebulous. Daylight hath backward stepped. 
The morning sun is blotted with eclipse. 

Chorus of the Spirits. 

Like the pale stricken leaves of the Autumn 

When Winter swoops downward to whirl them 

Afar from the nooks of the woodlands, 

And up through the clouds of the twilight, 

We shudder ! We hear a wind roaring 

And booming below in the darkness ; 

A voice whose low thunder is mingled 

With waves of the sibilant ocean. 

The clouds that were pearly and golden 

Are steeped in a blackening crimson. 

The spell of a magical presence 

Is nearing us out of the darkness. 

What is it ? No shape we distinguish — 

No voice — but a sound that is muffled, 

Muffled and stifled in thunder. 

We are troubled. Oh, help us, strong Angel ! 

A Form gathers out of the darkness, 

Awful and dim and abysmal ! 

Raphael. 
Fear not the gloomy Phantasm. Speak to him. 
If he will answer, ye may learn of him 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 209 

What human books of dead theology- 
Have seldom taught, or poets, though they sang 
Of Eden and the primal curse of man. 

The Spirits. 

Spirit, or phantom — darkening earth and sky, 
And creeping through the soul in grim despair — 
What art thou ? Speak ! whose shadow darkens thus ' 
The eye of morn ? 

Satan. 
I am not what I seem. 

The Spirits. 

Art thou that fallen Angel who seduced 

From their allegiance the bright hosts of heaven 

And men, and reignest now the lord of doom ? 

Satan. 

I am not what I seem to finite minds ; — 

No fallen Angel — for I never fell, 

Though priest and poet feign me exiled and doomed ; 

But ever was and ever shall be thus — 

Nor worse nor better than the Eternal planned. 

I am the Retribution, not the Curse. 

I am the' shadow and reverse of God ; 

The type of mixed and interrupted good ; 

The clod of sense without whose earthly base 

You spirit-flowers can never grow and bloom. 



210 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

The Spirits. 
We dread to ask — what need have we of thee ? 

Satan. 

I am that stern necessity of fate — 
Creation's temperament — the mass and mould 
Of circumstance, through which eternal law 
Works in its own mysterious way its will. 

The Spirits. 
Art thou not Evil — Sin abstract and pure ? 

Satan. 

There were no shadows till the worlds were made ; 
No evil and no sin till finite souls, 
Imperfect thence, conditioned in free-will, 
Took form, projected by eternal law 
Through co-existent realms of time and space. 

The Spirits. 
Thy words are dark. We dimly catch their sense. 

Satan. 

Naught evil, though it were the Prince of evil, 
Hath being in itself. For God alone 
Existeth in Himself, and Good, which lives 
As sunshine lives, born of the Parent Sun. 
I am the finite shadow of that Sun, 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 211 



Opposite, not opposing, only seen 
Upon the nether side. 

The Spirits. 

Art happy then ? 

Satan. 

Nor happy I nor wretched. I but do 
My work, as finite fate and law prescribe. 

The Spirits. 

Didst thou not tempt the woman and the man 
Of Eden, and beguile them to their doom ? 

Satan. 

No personal will am I, no influence bad 

Or good. I symbolize the wild and deep 

And unregenerated wastes of life, 

Dark with transmitted tendencies of race 

And blind mischance ; all crude mistakes of will — 

Proclivity unbalanced by due weight 

Of favoring circumstance ; all passion blown 

By wandering winds ; all surplusage of force 

Piled up for use, but slipping from its base 

Of law and order ; all undisciplined 

And ignorant mutiny against the wise 

Restraint of rules by centuries old indorsed, 

And proved the best so long it needs no proof ; — 

All quality o'erstrained until it cracks — 



212 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Yet but a surface crack ; the Eternal Eye 

Sees underneath the soul's sphere, as above, 

And knows the deep foundations of the world 

Will not be jarred or loosened by the stress 

Of sun and wind and rain upon the crust 

Of upper soil. Nay, let the earthquake split 

The mountains into steep and splintered chasms — 

Down deeper than the shock the adamant 

Of ages stands, symbol no less divine 

Of the eternal Law than heaven above. 

The Spirits. 
Shall we then doubt the sacred books — the faith 
That Satan was of old the foe of God ? 

Satan. 

Nations have planned their demons as they planned 

Their gods. Say, rather, God and Satan mixed, — 

A hybrid of perplexed theology, — 

Stood at the centre of the universe .; 

Ormuzd and Ahriman, in ceaseless war — 

A double spirit through whose nerves and veins 

Throbbed the vast pulses of his feverish moods 

Of blight and benediction. Did the Jew 

Or Pagan, save the few of finer mould, 

Own an unchanging God, or one self-willed, 

Who, like themselves, was moved to wrath, revenge 

And jealousy, to petty strifes and bars 

Of sect and clan — the reflex of their thought ? 



OZMUZD AND AHR1MAN. 213 

The Spirits. 
What if it were revealed to holy men, 
By faith, that God had formed a spirit vast 
Who fell, rebelled, tempted the race to death? 
Whether a foe who rode upon the wind, 
Or one within, leagued with some sweet, strong drift 
Of natural desire, tainted yet sweet ? 

Satan. 

Alas, did ever human eyes transcend 

And pierce beyond the hemisphere of tints 

That overarched their thought and hope, yet seemed 

A heaven of truth ? As man is so his God. 

So too his spirit of evil. Evil fixed 

He saw, eternal and abstract, whose tree 

Thrust down its grappling tap-roots in the heart, 

And poisoned where it grew ; its blighting shade 

By no sweet wandering winds of heaven caressed, 

No raindrops from the pitiless clouds. No birds 

Of song and summer in its branches built 

Their little nests of love. No hermit sought 

The shivering rustle of its chilly shade. 

Accursed of God it stood — accursed and drear 

It stood apart — a thing by God and man 

Hated or pitied as a pestilence 

O'er-passing cure. So hate not me. For I 

Am but the picture mortal eyes behold 

Shadowing the dread results of broken laws 



214 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Designed by eternal wisdom for the good 

Of man, though typed as Darkness, Pain, and Fire. 

The Spirits. 

Must not the eternal Justice punish man 
And spirits — now and in the great To-Be ? 
What sinner can escape his burning wrath ? 

Satan. 

The soul of man is man's own heaven or hell. 
God's love and justice will no curse on men 
Or spirits, who condemn themselves, and hide 
Their faces in the murky fogs of sense 
And lawless passion, and the hate and feud 
Born of all dense inwoven ignorance. 
Man loves or fears the shadow of himself. 
God shines behind him. Let him turn and see. 

[Vanishes slowly. 

The Spirits. 

Yet stay — speak, speak once more ! Tell us what fate 
Awaits the human race — now on this earth 
Teeming with life — and in the great Hereafter ! 

Raphael. 

The phantom-lips are dumb : nor could they answer. 
The book of fate is known to One alone. 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 215 

The Spirits. 
And thou — thou, sovereign Angel, knowest not ? 

Raphael. 
He alone knows whose being contains the all. 
Cease questioning. Have faith. Love reigns supreme. 



PART II. 

A Chorus of Human Spirits in the Mist. 
Far in the shuddering spaces of the North 

We live. We saw a Shape 
Of terror rise and spread and issue forth ; 

And we would fain escape 
The anger of his frown. We know him not, 

Nor whether it be he 
Who claims our homage, for the shadows blot 

The sun we may not see. 

We lift our prayers on heavy wings to one 

Who dwells beyond the sun ; 
Whose lightnings are decrees of life or doom ; 

Whose laws are veiled in gloom. 
Thick clouds and darkness are about thy throne 

Where thou dost reign alone. 
And we amid the mists and shadows grope, 

With faint bewildered hope. 



216 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

We fear thy awful judgments, and thy curse 

Upon thy Universe. 
For -we are told it is a fearful thing, 

O thou Almighty King, 
To fall into thy hands. O spare the rod — 

Thou art a jealous God ! 
O save us by the blood of him who died, 

That sin might not divide 
Our guilty souls from heaven and Christ and Thee. 

And yet we dread to see 
Thy face. How can the trembling fugitive 

Behold thy face and live ! 

Voice behind the Mist. 

Fear not, for ye shall live if ye receive 

The life divine, obedient to the law 

Of truth and good. So shall there be no frown 

Upon his face who wills the good of all. 

Choir of Angels in the Distance. 

God who made the tempest's winged terror 

And the smile of morn, 
Who art bringing truth from sin and error, 

Love from hate and scorn ; 

Lo, thy presence glows through all thy creatures, 
Passion-stained or fair ; 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN, 217 

Saint and sinner bear the selfsame features 
Thy bright angels wear. 

Human frailty all alike inherit, 

Yet our souls are free. 
Giver of all good, it is no merit 

That we turn to thee. 

Thou alone art pure in thy perfection. 

We thy children shine 
But as our soiled garments take reflection 

From thy light divine. 

Thou art reaching forth thine arms forever, 

Struggling souls to free. 
Leading man by every good endeavor 

Back to heaven and thee ! 

Chorus of Planetary Spirits. 

The presence that awed us and chilled us 
Dissolves in the dews of the morning. 
The darkness has vanished around us, 
And shrunk to the shadows that color 
The cloud flakes of gold and of purple : 
So vanish the thoughts that obscured us, 
The doubt and the dread of the evil 
That stained the starred robe of Creation. 
And we hear but one music pervading 



218 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

The planets and suns that are shining 

The spirits that pine in the darkness 
Or float in the joy of the morning. 

Semichoeus I. 

Have we wronged thee, O monarch of shadows ? 

Have we named thee the Demon of spirits ? 
We know that the good and the evil 

Each mortal and angel inherits 

The evil and good that are twisted 

As fibres of brass and of gold — 
To the All-seeing Eye have a meaning 

We know not — too vast to be told ; 
But the wise and the merciful Father, 

Though they stray in the desert and wold, 
Will lift up his lambs to his bosom, 

And gather them into his fold. 

Semichoeus II. 

Yet the guilt and the crime that have triumphed, 
Though shining in purple and gold, 

Shall bring their own sure retribution, 
As the prophets of ages have told. 

For Justice is sure in the order 

That rules through the heavens of old. 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 219 

Voice of a Prophet. 
Aye, though no tyrant's stern decree enforce 
The law, yet Justice still must hold its course ; 
Sure as the power that draws the falling stone, 
Sure as the electric thrill from zone to zone, 
The ocean's tides, the round of day and night, 
The burning tropic sun, the winter's blight — 
So follows, though long years have hid the seed, 
The fatal fruitage of the evil deed. 

Voice of a Philosopher. 

Yet not, we must believe, 
Like man's infirm opinion 
And incomplete tribunals 
God's larger judgments stand. 
He sees the Past and Present ; 
He knows the strong temptations ; 
The nets where lie entangled 
The creatures of his hand. 

He knows the deep enigmas 
No mortal mind has solved. 
The armed and banded legions, 
That bind earth's captives down, 
Hold no divine commission 
To pass the final sentence. 
Heaven holds its perfect balance, 
And smiles above their frown. 



220 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Song of Hopeful Spirits. 
1. 
Praise, praise ye the prophets, the sages 
Who lived and who died for the ages ; 
The grand and magnificent dreamers ; 
The heroes, the mighty redeemers ; 
The martyrs, reformers and leaders ; 
The voices of mystical Vedas ; 
The bibles of races long shrouded 
Who left us their wisdom unclouded ; 
The truth that is old as their mountains, 
But fresh as the rills from their fountains. 

2. 

And praise ye the poets whose pages 
Give solace and joy to the ages ; 
Who have seen in their marvellous trances 
Of thought and of rhythmical fancies, 
The manhood of Man in all errors ; 
The triumph of hope over terrors ; 
The great human heart ever pleading 
Its kindred divine, though misleading, 
Fate held it aloof from the heaven 
That to spirits untempted was given. 

Chorus. 

The creeds of the past that have bound us, 
With visions of terror around us 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 221 

Like dungeons of stone that have crumbled, 
Beneath us lie shattered and humbled. 
The tyranny mitred and crested, 
Flattered and crowned and detested ; 
The blindness that trod upon Science ; 

The bigotry Ignorance cherished ; 
The armed and the sainted alliance 

Of conscience and hate — they have perished, 
Have melted like mists in the splendor 

Of life and of beauty supernal — 
Of love ever watchful and tender, 

Of law ever one and eternal. 

Song of a Wise Spirit. 

The light of central suns o'erflows 

The unknown bounds of time and space. 
The shadows are but passing shows 

And clouds upon Creation's face. 
From out the chaos and the slime, 

From out the whirling winds of fire, 
From years of ignorance and crime, 

From centuries of wild desire, 
The shaping laws of truth and love 

Shall lift the savage from the clod ; 
Shall till the field and gild the grove 

With homes of man and domes of God. 
And Love and Science, side by side, 

With starry lamps of heavenly flame, 



222 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Shall light the darkness far and wide ; 

The wandering outcast shall reclaim ; 
Shall bury in forgotten graves 

Blind Superstition's tyrant brood ; 
Shall break the fetters of the slaves ; 

Shall bind the world in brotherhood ; 
Shall hurl all despots from the throne, 

And lift the saviors of the race ; 
And law and liberty alone 

From sea to sea the lands embrace. 

Hymn of a Devout Spirit. 

The time shall come when men no more 

Shall deem the sin that taints the earth 
A demon-spell — a monstrous birth — 

A curse forever to endure ; — 

Shall see that from one common root • 
Must spring the better and the worse ; 
And seek to cure, before they curse, 

The tree that drops its wormy fruit. 

For God must love, though man should hate 
The vine whose mildew blights its grapes ; 
Shall he not clothe with fairer shapes 

The lives deformed by earthly fate ? 

O praise him not that on a throne 
Of glory unapproached he sits, 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 223 

For deem a slavish fear befits 
The child a father calls his own. 

But praise him that in every thrill 
Of life his breath is in our lungs, 
And moves our hearts and tunes our tongues, 

Howe'er rebellious to his will. 

Praise him that all alike drink in 

A portion of the life divine, 

A light whose struggling soul-beams shine 
Through all the blinding mists of sin. 

For sooner shall the embracing day, 
The air that folds us in its arms, 
The morning sun that cheers and warms, 

Hold back their service, and decay, 

Ere God, who wraps the Universe 

With love, shall let the souls he made 
Fall from his omnipresent aid 

O'ershadowed by a human curse. 

Song of an Evolutionist. 
1. 

All in its turn is good 

And suited to its time ; 
Fire-mist and cosmic flood, 



224 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Ice, rock, and ocean slime ; 
Savage and Druid stern, 

Faith typed in legends wild. 
The mills of God still turn ; 

Order is Discord's child. 
Ever from worse to better 
Breaks Nature through her fetter — 
The spirit through the letter. 
One vast divine endeavor, 

One purpose still pursued — 
Upward and onward ever — 

All in its turn is good. 

2. 

Up from the centre striving 

Through countless change on change, 

Through shapes uncouth and strange 

The weakest doomed to perish 

The strongest still surviving ; 

Purpose divine in all. 

Whether they rise or fall 
Pledged to maintain and cherish 

Types higher still and higher, 

To struggle and aspire. 
One vast divine endeavor 
Upward and onward ever — 
Through fish and bird and beast — 
Power that hath never ceased 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 225 

Through darkness and through light — 
Through ape and troglodyte, 
Till best with best unite ; 
Through melancholy wastes 

Of unknown time and space — 
A power that never hastes, 

And never slackens pace 

Until the human face, 

Until the human form 

Beautiful, and swift and warm, 

Awaits the crowning hour, 

And blooms — a spirit-flower — 

Upward and onward ever 

One primal plan pursued. 

All in its turn is good. 

Song of an Old Poet. 

I sang of Eden and Creation's morn ; 

Of fiend and angel, triumph and despair. 

I caught the world's old music in the air — 
The strains that from a people's creed were born. 

I soared with seraphs, walked with lords of doom ; 

Basked, in the sun and groped in utter dark. 

I lit the olden legends with a spark 
Whose radiance but revealed eternal gloom. 

I stood enveloped in a cloud o'ercharged 

With thunder ; and the blind mad bolts that flew 



226 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Were heaven's decrees. They spared alone the few 
Whose hearts by grace supernal were enlarged. 

Upon imagination's star-lit wings 

I flew beyond the steadfast earth's supports, 
And stood within Jehovah's shining courts, 

And heard what seemed the murmur of the springs, 

The streams of living and eternal youth. 
Was it a dream ? Hath God another Word 
Than that between the Cherubim we heard 

When Israel served the Lord with zeal and truth ? 

Are those but earthborn shadows that we saw 
Thronging the spaces of the heavens and hells ? 
Is there a newer prophet-voice that tells 

The trumpet-tidings of a grander law ? 

The lurid words above the fatal door — 
The door itself — the circles of despair 
Are fast dissolving in serener air. 

They were but dreams. They can return no more. 

No more the vengeance of a demon-god ; 

No more the lost souls whirling in black drifts 
Of endless pain. The wind of morning lifts 

The fog where once our groping footsteps trod. 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 227 

I looked, and lo ! the Abyss was all ablaze 
With light of heaven, and not abysmal fire ; 
And fain would tune to other chords my lyre ; 

And fain would sing the alternate nights and days — 

The days and nights that are the wings of Time ; 

The love that melts away the eternal chains ; 

The judgments only of remedial pains ; 
The hidden innocence in guilt and crime. 

The sunlight on the illumined tracts of earth 

Sprang from the darkness, pale and undiscerned. 
And the great creeds the world hath slowly learned 

Are truths evolved from forms of ruder birth. 

The tides of life, divine and human, swell 

And flood the desert shore, the stagnant pool. 
And sage and poet know, where God hath rule 

There is no cloud in heaven — no doom in hell. 



Full Chorus of the Planetary Spirits. 
1. 

Hear ye, brothers, the voices around that are swelling 
in chorus ? 
Nearer and sweeter they rise and fall through the 
nebulous light : 



228 ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 

Voices of sages and prophets — while under our footsteps 
and o'er us 
Roll in their orbits the worlds whose circles we 
tracked through the night. 

2. 

Melting away in the morning, we follow their pathways 
no longer, 
Knowing the hand that has guided will bear them 
forever along ; 
Bear them forever, and shape them to destinies fairer 
and stronger 
Than when the joyous archangels hailed their creation 
with song. 

3. 

Not with a light that is waning — not with the curse of 
a dooming, 
They shall accomplish their cycles through ages of 
fire and of cloud : 
Ever from their chaos to order unfolding, progressing, 
and blooming, 
Till with the wisdom and beauty of ages on ages 
endowed. 

4. 

Out of the regions of discord, out of the kingdoms of 
evil, 



ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN 229 

God in the races to come shall abolish the reign of 

despair. 
Who shall confront his decrees with the phantoms of 

demon and devil ? 
Who shall unhallow the joy of his light and the health 

of his air ? 

5. 

Lo ! on the day-star itself there are spots that, coming 
and going, 
Send through the spaces mysterious thrillings like 
omens of blight. 
And the great planets afar are convulsed, as when winter 
comes blowing 
Over the shuddering oceans and islands of tropical 
light. 

6. 

Shadows are shadows ; and all that is made is illumined 
and shaded, — 
Bound by the laws of its being — heaven and earth 
in its breath. 
He who hath made us will lift us, though stained and 
deformed and degraded — 
Lift us and love us, though drowned in the surges 
of darkness and death. 



A POET'S SOLILOQUY. 

On a time — not of old — 
When a poet had sent out his soul and no welcome had 

found 
Where the heart of the nation in prose stood fettered 

and bound 
• In fold upon fold — 
He called back his soul who had pined for an answer 

afloat ; 
And thus in the silence of night and the pride of his 

spirit he wrote. 

Come back, poet-thought ! 
For they honor thee not in thy vesture of verse and of 

song. 
Come back — thou hast hovered about in the market too 

long. 
In vain thou hast sought 
To stem the strong current that flows from the Philistine 

lands. 
Thou hast failed to deliver the message the practical 

public demands. 



A POET'S SOLILOQUY. 231 

Come back to the heights 
Of thy vision — thy love — thy Parnassus of beauty and 

truth, 
From the valleys below where the labor of age and of 

youth 
Has no need of thy lights ; 
For science has marshalled the way with a lamp of its 

own. 
Till they woo thee with wakening love thou must follow 

thy pathway alone. 

We have striven, have toiled, 

* 

Have pressed with the foremost to sing to the men of 

our time 
The thought that was deepest, the lay that was lightest 

in rhyme. 
We are baffled and foiled. 
The crowd hurries on intent upon traffic and pay ; 
They have ears, but they hear not. What chance to be 

heard has the poet to-day ? 

So we turn from the crowd, 
And we sing as we please, like the thrush far away in 

the woods. 
They may listen or not, as they choose, to our fancies 
and moods 
Chanted low — chanted loud, 



232 a POETS SOLILOQUY. 

In the sunshine and storm — 'mid the hearts that are 

tender or hard. 
What need of applause from the world, when Art is its 

own reward ? 



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